High-throughput and live monitoring of gene expression in stem cells

0853993 Andreadis Intellectual merit The proposed work represents a significant step forward from current methodologies that may enable a new level of understanding of the genetic networks that may be important in stem cell differentiation or self-renewal. Although this methodology will be initially applied to a subpopulation of bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), the broader applicability of this approach will likely impact other fields of biotechnology, bioengineering and medicine. Broader impacts A key outcome of the proposed work will be the development of a novel high-throughput technology that can be used to study diverse biological systems. Specifically, the proposed project will lead to the development of a genome-wide lentivirus library and lentivirus microarrays that will be made available to the scientific and engineering communities and that will be applicable to a wide range of cell types and bioengineering problems. The same concept can be expanded to libraries of antisense-RNA that can be used in loss-of-function studies, and these will be similarly disseminated. It will also produce quantitative kinetic data sets that will be available to the scientific community via an internet database. It will allow engineers to take a leading role in the growing field of functional genomics and encourage the application of engineering approaches to understanding stem cell differentiation in a quantitative manner. The PIs will make a concerted effort to recruit underrepresented minority and women graduate students for the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and this project, and has supervised a large fraction of female and minority students. The PI's former doctoral students are employed by diverse pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and engineering companies.