ALEX GAGNE
The results of her survey, revealed in January, is an “atlas” of how particular person transcription components have an effect on the id of stem cells. Joung says she has seen neurons, beating coronary heart muscle, and placenta cells seem underneath her microscope. However the final objective, she says, “is to have the ability to make any cell sort, and in a really managed method.”
Provides of particular cells could possibly be helpful for testing medication or new kinds of therapies. Different scientists learning transcription components hope to search out combos that may kind human eggs within the lab and even present the important thing to rejuvenation remedies. “We aren’t simply producing lists after we display screen. It’s a listing with a objective,” says Joung. “There’s all the time that finish objective.”
Genetic screening is “massive” science—Joung’s PhD work relied on 17 collaborators. And it’s costly, too. Simply buying all of the genes she wanted value $550,000, cash Joung was capable of elevate from Broad’s Stanley Heart for Psychiatric Analysis, amongst others.
However the bodily scale of the work is usually microscopic. The genes arrive as ephemera in plastic tubes. A lot of the motion occurs in cell-culture rooms, the place trainees in white coats work elbow to elbow in entrance of particular workbenches, coated with plexiglass. Ultimately, Joung’s experiment concerned over 1,000,000 cells. But all of those cells would, collectively, be smaller than a single fruit fly.
Joung hasn’t gotten round to answering the query about these astrocytes that piqued her curiosity as an undergrad. And she or he admits it’s not her high precedence anymore. Now, as a postdoc on the Whitehead Institute, additionally in Cambridge, she’s utilizing her screening method to dig into elementary questions on how proteins are made inside cells.
“Julia is a technically good and conceptually daring scientist who’s constructing instruments that present distinctive and complete views of advanced processes,” says Jonathan Weissman, who leads the Whitehead lab during which Joung now works.
