Like us, cells are continuously exposed to chemicals, nutrients, and contact with other cells (among other stimuli), which help them shape their identity. Also like us, the impact of such stimuli is not always the same: depending on their identity, cells might react differently to the same chemical. Also like for most of us, cellular identity (also referred to as cellular state) is not a static concept and can change during the course of life. With this in mind, several questions arise: do different cells in the same state react differently to the same stimulus? Can we predict how the same cell will react differently to the same stimulus at different times of its life? Does a cell remember the sequence of stimuli it has been exposed? Does such memories impact cell identity?
Being able to answer these questions would allow to anticipate the most likely trajectory that a cell will follow when subject to external perturbations and decipher the role of cellular heterogeneity. With this, we will become better at (re-)programming cell identity in vitro, which can give rise to novel and efficient personalised therapies for some diseases. Hence, the acquired knowledge will impact both fundamental developmental biology and translational regenerative medicine, which will benefit a much wider scientific community.
Within i-SignalTrace, our goal is to establish the experimental and analytical tools to investigate how cells react to stimuli at a particular time in their lives, and how this reaction impacts their identity (and the identity of their offspring) later.
Hence, we aim to establish molecular machines to "write" how different perturbations affect the expression of a some key genes. This information will be recorded in the cellular DNA forever, and will even be transferred to the daughter cells. By sequencing, we will then be able to "read" it and quantify the gene history of each cell and based on the stimuli it underwent.
