Taking Single-Cell RNA-seq by STORM: Nanoliter-Scale High-Resolution Total Single-Cell Transcriptome Profiling

Dr. Ben Johnson earned his B.S. in biology from Calvin College and his Ph.D. in microbiology and molecular genetics from Michigan State University. His graduate work focused on developing chemical probes to dissect molecular mechanisms of environmental sensing and adaptation in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB), with the ultimate goal of identifying new therapies against TB infections. The small molecules identified often would not directly kill TB in vitro and instead acted as anti-virulence compounds, disarming the pathogen during infection. Thus, computational biology approaches were used in conjunction with “wet” experiments to narrow down putative pathways altered in response to treatment with these experimental compounds to generate tractable hypotheses. Following graduate school, he worked as a bioinformatics research scientist in the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core at Van Andel Institute doing sequencing data analysis. In 2019, he joined the laboratories of Drs. Tim Triche and Hui Shen as a postdoctoral fellow.

Mary Rhodes holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Following graduation, Mary began her career in the Genomics Core at Northwestern University. Over the next 14 years, she would continue her Genomics Core work at both the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Van Andel Institute. During this time, Mary’s work evolved from Sanger sequencing and custom printed microarrays to Next Generation Sequencing and Illumina BeadArrays, and most recently to Long Read Sequencing and single cell library preparations. In early 2020, Mary took the role of Laboratory Manager for Dr. Tim Triche, Jr. where she continues to focus on methods development.

Marc Wegener is a graduate of Western Michigan University (B.S. – Biological Sciences) with over 10 years of experience in both chemistry and molecular biology labs. From 2013 to 2018 he worked at the Northwest Genomics Center at the University of Washington. During this time, he led the team responsible for operation and maintenance of the genome center's fleet of Illumina sequencers, including MiSeq, NextSeq, HiSeq, and NovaSeq platforms. Marc joined the Genomics Core at Van Andel Research Institute in May 2018 and has been working to improve the core’s automated liquid handling services.