Summary

Our body contains several hundred different types of cells with specific physiological functions and properties. However, each cell type in our body has same genes. Cells get its identity because the genes required for specific functions gets expressed, whereas the genes for other functions remain inactive. Expression and splicing differences between cell types, as well as between differentiated and undifferentiated states, indicate that cell properties are completely defined by specific molecular configurations. To determine how these molecular configurations, as a consequence of alternative splicing, affects the transitions between the cell states is a main challenge in the study of cell identity. Also the relationship between these molecular determinants and the cell lineage trajectories will be of great importance in understanding the process of cell differentiation at the macroscopic levels. The aim is to provide computational framework to understand and quantify the splicing events in cell subpopulations in scRNA sequencing experiments. The main goal of the project is to analyse single cell RNA sequencing data at different differentiated and undifferentiated cell states to identify the molecular determinants of cell identity and study cell differentiation as a phase transition between cell states.