Julie Burel, Ph.D.
Keynote Speaker
Are you seeing double? The importance of distinguishing cell-cell complexes from singlets in flow cytometry
Our recent work has highlighted that care needs to be taken when interpreting single cell data originating from flow cytometry acquisition or cell sorting of human blood samples: We found that doublets of T cells bound to other immune cells such as B cells or Monocytes are often present in the live singlet gate of human peripheral blood samples acquired by flow cytometry. This hidden “contamination” generates atypical gene signatures of mixed cell lineage in what is assumed to be single cells, which can lead to data misinterpretation, such as the description of novel immune cell types. Importantly, many of these doublets show signatures of immune synapses and are at increased frequency during infection compared to steady-state, suggesting they are not technical artifacts but instead hold biological relevance and thus making their study highly relevant. In this lecture, I will present experimental and data analysis strategies to help distinguish between singlets and cell–cell complexes using imaging and non-imaging flow cytometry. I will also highlight our most recent work aiming at improving the discrimination between doublets with biological relevance versus mere technical artifacts. Together, these data provide a strong rationale to revisit the traditional dogma in immunology and flow cytometry that cell doublets should be ignored, and push for improvement in doublet detection in existing cytometry instruments and the development of novel technologies dedicated to their study.
Short Biography
Dr. Julie Burel is an instructor in the Peters lab at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (San Diego). She received her PhD in Immunology from the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) in 2015, and joined the Peters lab for her postdoctoral studies in 2016. Dr Burel’s research interests are the characterization of host immune signatures to infectious diseases using systems immunology approaches, by combining multidimensional datasets such as flow cytometry and single-cell transcriptomics. She has over 13 years of continuous experience with flow cytometry, including the development of standardized workflows to control for technical and biological variability in flow cytometry data, and more recently the study of immune cell-cell complexes.
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