Single-cell genomics promises to revolutionize biology and medicine. For example, RNA-sequencing of individual cells during differentiation processes or in adult tissues and organs has already revealed heterogeneity in dynamic responses, previously unknown cell types and sub-types and stochasticity in allelic transcription. Rickard Sandberg’s group is developing and applying improved single-cell RNA-sequencing technologies for a better understanding of how our genome is controlled within cells and across cell types of our bodies. Applying these technologies to both diseased and healthy tissue provides unprecedented resolution of aberrant genomic regulation in each cell type, important for novel therapeutic strategies. They propose to use single-cell RNA-sequencing to study the clonal nature of both gene and allelic expression across tissues and cell types. This knowledge is important for our understanding of how variations in gene expression manifest and how they impact development of characteristics and ultimately genetic disease.

Rickard Sandberg is Associate Professor of Bioinformatics at Karolinska Institutet (KI) and an Assistant Member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Prior to starting his lab at KI, Dr Sandberg was a graduate student with Ingemar Ernberg at KI and a post-doctoral fellow with Christopher Burge at Massachusetts Institute for Technology. Dr Sandberg has received awards including the Anders Jahre’s medical prize for young medical research (2014, Nordic prize), Åke Wiberg Prize (2009) and Sven and Ebba-Christina Hagbergs Prize (2012).  In 2012 he was selected as an EMBO Young Investigator and has received large funding awards from the European Research Council, the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research.

Sandberg Lab