Harnessing the Power of Spatial Omics: Innovative Approaches and Insights into Cell Function

Xiaowei Zhuang, PhD, is an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the David B. Arnold Professor of Science at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She earned her BSc degree in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China, and her PhD in physics from University of California, Berkeley. Zhuang completed postdoctoral training in biophysics at Stanford University in California. She pioneered the development of super-resolution imaging and genome-scale imaging methods. She developed stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), a super-resolution imaging method, that helped her discover novel molecular structures in cells. Zhuang also invented a single-cell transcriptome and genome imaging method, MERFISH. Using this method, she made discoveries in areas ranging from the cellular organization and functions in the brain and the 3D genome organization and gene regulation in cells.

Jasmine Plummer, PhD, is the founding director of the Center for Spatial Omics and member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. She is an associate professor and is cross appointed in the departments of Developmental Neurobiology and Cellular and Molecular Biology. Plummer received her PhD in molecular and medical genetics at the University of Toronto Mount Sinai Hospital in Canada and completed her postdoctoral training at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. Plummer’s lab uses a multiomic approach through single cell and spatial genomics to better understand the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders and cancer.

Gina L.C. Yosten, PhD, is a tenured associate professor of pharmacology and physiology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. She studies the role of orphan G protein-coupled receptors in the physiology and pathophysiology of metabolism and endocrine regulation. Using spatial multiomics single cell imaging of human islets, Yosten has uncovered disease-dependent changes in islet cell-cell communication enabling new insights into pancreatic hormone secretion. She is the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.