Applying Spatial Transcriptomics to understand inflammatory skin diseases

Psoriasis is a skin autoimmune disease that affects 2-3% of the global population. Around half of the patients carry the major risk gene for developing the disease: Human Leukocyte Antigen-C*06:02 (HLA-Cw6). The function of HLA molecules is to present little protein snippets (peptide antigens) to immune cells, e.g. T cells. The immune cells, in turn, decide whether the presented antigen is harmless and can be ignored or poses a danger and needs dealing with. In order to understand closer the role of T cells and other immune cells in inflammatory skin conditions like psoriasis, we apply the new technology of spatial transcriptomics to interrogate cell-cell interactions in skin during steady state and disease. If you have a keen interest in bioinformatics and data science paired with coding experience, this cutting edge project can teach you big data analysis in the budding field of spatial transcriptomics.