Online meeting, 8 September 2022
On 8 September 2022, the Comparative and Veterinary Immunology Group (CVIG) of the British Society for Immunology organised an online symposium, addressing “Single-cell sequencing technologies and the immune response in different species”. The online event was attended by just over 100 delegates, using Zoom’s meeting platform. This allowed delegates to interact via chat or by their microphones and cameras.
Six speakers from different countries in Europe shared their experiences with single cell RNA-seq approaches across a range of applications and species. Dr Isabelle Schwartz, INRAE, Jouy-en-Josas, France and Dr Thien-Phong Vu Manh, CIML, Marseille, France gave a joint talk on “Cell type- and time-dependent biological responses in whole human lung model to study SARS-CoV-2 infection”. Dr Schwartz focused on the biological results, sharing valuable insights in how single cell transcriptomics can reveal changes in inflammatory and metabolic gene signatures in different cell types of perfused human lungs. Dr Vu Manh focused on the underlying bioinformatic analysis, highlighting relevant steps in the bioinformatic workflow for quality control and introducing the computational tool BubbleGUM, which allows the comparison of phenotype signatures derived from sets of gene transcripts. Dr Arianne Richard from the Babraham Institute, UK, demonstrated how single cell data on the mRNA and protein level can be used to dissect signalling events in naïve murine T cells. Moving away from mice and humans, further talks centred around chickens and cattle. Dr Adrian Smith, University of Oxford, UK, provided an overview of the technology developed over the years to analyse the T cell receptor repertoire in chickens, from gel-based spectratyping to single cell analysis, highlighting the benefits and limitations of different approaches. This was followed by a presentation from Professor Benjamin Dewals, University of Liege, Belgium, demonstrating how he used bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing to dissect T cell responses against bovine malignant catarrhal fever, also addressing chromatin modulation in these cells. The last speaker was Dr Marie di Placido, The Pirbright Institute, UK, showing how she combined single-cell and whole antibody repertoire approaches to analyse the FMDV-specific antibody responses in cattle.
After the presentations, a round table discussion took place. All speakers gathered with the moderators Dr Wilhelm Gerner (The Pirbright Institute, Woking, UK) and Dr Kate Sutton (The Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, UK) to answer and discuss single cell-related topics of interest to the delegates. Lively discussions arose from questions around how a bioinformatic analysis pipeline can be established in a research institution and how much bioinformatic knowledge early career researchers should obtain to stay competitive.
In addition, organisers designed a poll during the online event. Several questions were raised, such as the use of, and the experience of delegates in the field of single cell RNA-sequencing. This highlighted that a large proportion of delegates were using or planning to use single cell RNA-seq in their future studies and that many had little to no experience in analysing single cell RNA-seq data. The poll also highlighted the representation of bovine, ovine, porcine, avian and murine researcher’s participation at the event. The feedback questionnaire provided to the delegates after the event demonstrated that on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 10 (very satisfied), 80% voted “8” or higher. Questions on the format of future events revealed that 52% would prefer hybrid meetings over online meetings (36%) and in-person meetings (12%). There was also a strong preference for technology-specific meetings (88%) over species-specific meetings (12%) for the future.
CVIG want to forward our appreciation and huge thank you to the BSI conference organisation staff, Jane Sessenwein and especially to Tracy Symons who provided a wealth of information and time to organise and deliver this meeting.
CVIG committee: Wilhelm Gerner, Kate Sutton, Amanda Gibson, Rebecca McLean, Lindert Benedictus