Some of SeaHub's scientists and researchers pose for a photo following a team meeting.
Researchers and scientists at the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology (SeaHub) this month will be commemorating the BBI’s project’s first anniversary.
The project has been compared to embedding a smart watch into each cell of an individuals and, thereby, recovering “the full autobiography of each cell,” according to the project’s announcement last December.
SeaHub is a five-year, $70 million collaboration among the Allen Institute, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the University of Washington. It “brings together the best of large-scale science and philanthropy with proven academic power to develop, refine, and share this single-cell technology,” the announcement stated.
SeaHub’s research spans activities in labs of: Drs. Jay Shendure, Marion Pepper, Cole Trapnell, Sudarshan Pinglay, and Nobu Hamazaki at the University of Washington. In addition, it has established research projects in a lab established earlier this year at the Allen Institute’s Dexter Yard facility in Seattle’s South Lake Union district.
Researchers and staff at Dexter Yard, led by Dr. Jesse Gray, grew in number from one person in starting on January 2 to 23 by September 1. Of the 23, 18 are new hires; 16 are Allen staff and 7 are UW trainees, staff or faculty, thereby validating the project’s vision of deep collaboration and cross-institutional communication between the Allen and UW.
Employees at Dexter Yard are broadly organized into five teams (Sense, Write, Read, Build, In Vivo). An additional 44 – UW trainees, staff, and faculty – are also part of SeaHub, for a total headcount of 67. The UW members of SeaHub are affiliated with the five academic labs or the Brotman Baty Institute’s Advanced Technology Lab.
SeaHub accomplishments are published in several papers and pre-prints in 2024, including:
- Nature: Symbolic recording of signalling and cis-regulatory element activity to DNA; and A single-cell time-lapse of mouse prenatal development from gastrula to birth;
- Nature Reviews Genetics: Revealing gene function with statistical inference at single-cell resolution
- Nature Cell Biology: Retinoic acid induces human gastruloids with posterior embryo-like structures
- bioRxiv: Diversified, miniaturized and ancestral parts for mammalian genome engineering and molecular recording
