Current Bioinformatics Seminar
Time: 11AM Tuesdays.
Venue: Davis Auditorium and Online
16 December 2025
This is a WEHI only event.Revealing clonal dynamics and single cell gene expression in breast cancer using SPLINTR-barcoding
Xueyi DongWEHI Bioinformatics/ACRF CBSC
A key challenge in breast cancer research is to understand how diverse cellular subpopulations emerge within a tumour and how these populations evolve under therapy to drive relapse. To characterise these dynamics in a quantitative and lineage-resolved manner, we are applying SPLINTR—a high-resolution single-cell lineage-tracing technology—to two breast cancer PDX models treated with targeted therapy. SPLINTR provides clonal identities by embedding a synthetically designed DNA barcode within a reporter transcript, allowing barcode sequences to be captured directly in standard 10x Genomics scRNA-seq libraries. The resulting dataset offers an opportunity to identify emerging resistant subclones and uncover the molecular mechanisms that underpin therapeutic escape. The seminar will focus on analytical strategies for identifying clonal barcodes, assigning clonal labels to individual cells, and integrating clonal and transcriptomic information.