Lauren Saunders
Lauren Saunders is a new junior professor at the Centre for Organismal Studies at Heidelberg University, specializing in neural crest lineage plasticity in fish using developmental genetics and single-cell genomics. She holds a B.A. in biology and Asian studies from St. Olaf College and earned her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Washington, where she explored thyroid hormone signaling effects on neural crest-derived cells in post-embryonic zebrafish. Her postdoctoral work in Cole Trapnell's lab focused on high-resolution phenotyping of zebrafish mutants using single-cell RNA-sequencing. Lauren’s recent publication in Nature highlights advancements in developmental genetics using zebrafish to understand gene functions during embryogenesis. The study introduces the ‘zebrafish single-cell atlas of perturbed embryos’ (ZSCAPE), featuring technologies like sci-seq and CRISPR-Cas9 for comprehensive phenotyping, facilitating the analysis of genetic dependencies and cell type dynamics. Additionally, profiling specific cell populations lead to novel insights about the early origins of the skull.