معرفی
Omer Bayraktar is a Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, leading research in the Cellular Genomics Programme. His work focuses on decoding human brain cellular diversity using spatial transcriptomics, imaging, and functional screening to study neural complexity in health and disease.
Bayraktar's educational background includes a PhD from HHMI under Chris Doe, investigating neural diversity development in Drosophila, followed by postdoctoral work at University of California, San Francisco and University of Cambridge as a Life Sciences Research Foundation Fellow. He developed a spatial transcriptomic pipeline during his postdoc to analyze astrocyte heterogeneity in the cerebral cortex.
His research explores neural cell type mapping, glial-neuronal interactions, and cellular pathways in neurodevelopmental disorders. Recent publications emphasize 3D tissue mapping, multi-omic integration, and computational tools like Cell2fate and WebAtlas. His work bridges neurogenetics and computational biology to advance understanding of human tissue ecosystems.
Bayraktar's lab collaborates with the Human Cell Atlas initiative and develops technologies such as automated histology pipelines and highly-multiplexed smFISH for molecular cell typing. His team also investigates glia-based therapies and astrocyte functional heterogeneity in neurodevelopmental contexts.
Key scientific contributions include:
- Discovering astrocyte layer patterns independent of neuronal laminae
- Developing cell2location for spatial cell mapping
- Characterizing Drosophila neural stem cell models with human relevance
Notable awards include the Life Sciences Research Foundation Fellowship during his postdoctoral training. His current group includes a PhD student, Senior Data Scientists, and Bioinformaticians.
