HuBMAP member group Caltech-Harvard Transformative Technology Development (TTD) is applying intron-seqFISH for more than 1,000 genes to tissues. Collaborating with scientists at HuBMAP’s Caltech-UW Tissue Mapping Center (TMC), the team will perform intron-seqFISH experiments on blood vessels in the heart and other organs across individuals of both sexes and different ages.

Intron-seqFISH is a method for “bar-coding” in which genes in a cell are active in a microscope image. The method allows scientists to view the activity of thousands of times more genes compared with previous methods. By integrating the new method into the TMC’s existing work with earlier types of seqFISH imaging, the effort will allow scientists to analyze messenger RNA “working copies” of genes as they are copied from the DNA in the cell’s nucleus and as they are edited and exported out of the nucleus for translation into working proteins. This will allow the team to classify different cell types by their gene activity at any given time, shedding light on how both healthy and diseased tissues function.