Rhea Bhakhri
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Kurt Hankenson, Professor
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Orthopaedic Surgery, Michigan Medicine
Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Session: Session 2 (11am – 11:50am)
Breakout Room: Room 11
Presenter: 4
Abstract
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the functions of the myriad of cell clusters within the human body, many cell biology research studies utilize a process called single cell RNA sequencing to analyze the expression of different genes across cell clusters. In order to properly analyze the information gathered from the single cell RNA sequencing process, researchers must hire an outside body to run an analytical program to develop plots and graphs to visualize the data. Problems may arise regarding the accuracy of the developed plots and graphs because of their lack of understanding of the research project itself. This may lead to incorrect assumptions regarding the gene expression and, in turn, the function of different cell clusters. For the Hankenson Lab’s work on gene expression during bone and joint development, I personally ran the analysis and developed the plots for single cell RNA sequencing. The first half of the project entailed using the Single Cell Portal to track the different expression of genes within the WNT pathway to gain a biological understanding of the study. The second part focused on utilizing the Seurat library within R Studio to run multiple analyses on different data sets involved in the study. This involves normalizing the data set, identifying variable features within the data set, running a principal component analysis, and a non-linear dimensionality reduction. All these different programs allow for the development of heat maps, violin plots, and UMAPs. These plots will then be used by Hankenson Lab to further their study in identifying different cell clusters involved in bone and joint development as well as each cell cluster’s function.
Authors: Rhea Bhakhri, Alexander Knights, Kurt Hankenson
Research Method: Computer Programming
