Haiqi Chen
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Genetics
Cells do not work in isolation. Where a cell sits, and what is packed into its internal compartments, shapes what it does.
- Fields
Genetics
Biology
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
spermatogonial stem cells
stem cell niche
spermatogenesis
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Map ligand–receptor interactions, where signaling molecules bind receptors on neighboring cells, between human spermatogonial stem cells and their niche using spatial transcriptomics on intact testis tissue sections.
- Compare human and mouse sperm stem cell niches to test whether human-specific ligand–receptor pairs are crucial for human stem cell self-renewal and differentiation.
- Examine how germline cells contribute to the function of the human spermatogonial stem cell niche using functional, cellular and molecular analyses.
- Develop a spatial genomics platform that profiles the genome, epigenome and transcriptome inside biomolecular condensates, membrane-less cell compartments, at sub-micron resolution in native cells and tissues.
- Compare the molecular content of biomolecular condensates across healthy and disease states and across locations within cells, and make the tools easy for other labs to adopt.
More about the research
Haiqi Chen's grants share a single theme: measuring gene activity and molecular content in its exact location, using spatial genomics methods that keep tissues and cells intact. One project applies these tools to the stem cells that make sperm. The other builds new tools to look inside tiny droplet-like compartments within cells.
Why it matters
Some infertile men, and cancer patients hoping to preserve fertility, could eventually benefit from methods to grow and expand human sperm stem cells in the lab. Knowing which niche signals sustain these cells is a needed step toward such cultures and toward lab-grown sperm. The condensate-profiling tools could give researchers a new way to see how cell compartments change in disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kellee Siegfried
University of Massachusetts-Boston, MA·Biology
Identify the testis RNAs bound directly by Adad1, an RNA binding protein needed to maintain zebrafish sperm stem cells. Compare these RNAs in adad1 mutant and normal testes to see whether Adad1 stabilizes or destabilizes them.
Brian Hermann
University of Texas at San Antonio, TX·Biology
Identify small molecules that bind RBM46, the germ-cell-specific RNA-binding protein required for sperm production, through drug screening, and advance the best binders as starting points for targeted degraders.
Junyue Cao
Rockefeller University, NY·Neuroscience
Develop sciNext1000, a high-throughput, low-cost single-cell genomics method, and use it to profile four million cells from post-mortem human hippocampus to measure adult neurogenesis in aging and Alzheimer's disease.
The school
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center: 40 labs on PI Pages, $869M a year on research, 86 research doctorates a year.
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