Stephen Quake is invited by the Collège de France assembly at the suggestion of Prof. Edith Heard.
Lectures in English.
These four lectures explore fundamental aspects of cellular biology and their medical applications. The first lecture, "Understanding the mysteries of the cell: how do many cell types arise from one genome?", examines how diverse cell types emerge from identical genetic material. It describes the creation of a human reference atlas with over one million cells from 24 tissues, characterizing more than 400 cell types and their tissue-specific gene expression patterns.
The second lecture, "Understanding the mysteries of the cell: how do mutations arise in our bodies?", investigates the origins of genetic mutations. It connects historical debates about bacterial mutations to modern questions about human genetic diversity, discussing how single-cell genomics has illuminated the evolutionary history of mutations, including those leading to cancer.
The third lecture, "Understanding the mysteries of the cell: our immune repertoire viewed through Darwin's eyes", addresses the immune system's antibody diversity. It explores mechanisms of antibody formation, including gene segment recombination and sequence diversification, while examining fundamental questions about repertoire expression and similarity between individuals.
The final lecture, "Medical innovations from the genome revolution: liquid biopsies", highlights a practical application of genomic knowledge. It describes how circulating cell-free nucleic acids, discovered in 1948, have been combined with high-throughput sequencing to develop non-invasive diagnostic tests that have replaced traditional biopsies for millions of patients in fields including pregnancy, transplant medicine, infectious disease, and cancer.
