Mirana Ramialison (Transcriptomics & Bioinformatics, Stem Cell Biology Group, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Victoria, Australia ) has been invited by Filippo Del Bene to hold a talk on Thurdsday 5 May, 2 p.m. , in the conference room of the UCL , 13 Rue Moreau.

This talk will be on "Investigating normal and diseased hearts using spatially-resolved transcriptomics"

1% of Australian babies are born with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), manifesting as anatomical heart defects that are detrimental for the newborn. Despite its prevalence, the aetiology of more than 80% of CHD cases remains unknown, making diagnosis and evaluation of the risk of the disease inheritance difficult. Our team has a long-standing interest in identifying the specific gene sets required for the formation of a healthy heart based on the principle that perturbations in these genes will impair normal development, resulting in anatomical cardiac defects. CHD manifests in structural defects affecting different regions of the heart. As, thousands of genes are expressed in the heart at any given time point during development, which of these genes are critical for heart formation and play a significant role in CHD? In order to identify the genes that are implicated in a specific cardiac malformation, we generated the first spatially resolved map of the murine heart (https://3d-cardiomics.erc.monash.edu/) and identified synexpression groups expressed in distinct regions of the heart. Using spatial transcriptomics on diseased hearts, we uncovered spatially restricted molecular responses that shed further light into the mechanism of disease. These novel technologies allow to unbiasedly uncover novel genetic determinants of the cardiac gene regulatory network.