Bio:

Ed Lein is a Senior Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and an Affiliate Professor in the Departments of Neurological Surgery and Laboratory Medicine and Pathology (DLMP) at the University of Washington. He received a B.S. in biochemistry from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from UC Berkeley, and performed postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Ed joined the Allen Institute in 2004 and has provided scientific leadership for the creation of large-scale anatomical, cellular and gene expression atlases of the adult and developing mammalian brain as catalytic community resources, including the inaugural Allen Mouse Brain Atlas and a range of developmental and adult human and non-human primate brain atlases. Particular current research interests involve the use of single cell genomics as a core phenotype to understand brain cellular organization, mammalian conservation and human specificity, define cellular vulnerability in disease, and identify regulatory elements that allow cell type-specific targeting and manipulation.

He leads the Human Cell Types Department, which aims to create comprehensive cell atlases of the human and non-human primate brain, understand what is disrupted in Alzheimer’s disease, and create tools for precision genetic targeting of brain cell types as transformative tools for basic neuroscience and gene therapy. He is also a member of the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN), a member of the Organizing Committee of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA), and a CIFAR fellow.

Ed's areas of expertise include developmental neurobiology, structural and cellular neuroanatomy, transcriptomics and epigenomics, comparative neurobiology, and Alzheimer’s disease. His research program work encompasses brain cell atlasing, comparative neurobiology, Alzheimer’s disease, and gene therapy.

Ed Lein's Recent Publications

• Transcriptomic diversity of cell types across the adult human brain
  
• Comparative transcriptomics reveals human-specific cortical features
  
• Transcriptomic cytoarchitecture reveals principles of human neocortex organization
• Signature morpho-electric properties of diverse GABAergic interneurons in the human neocortex
• Morpho-electric and transcriptomic divergence of the layer 1 interneuron repertoire in human versus mouse neocortex
• Inter-individual variation in human cortical cell type abundance and expression
• A comparison of anatomic and cellular transcriptome structures across 40 human brain diseases
• Comparative single cell epigenomic analysis of gene regulatory programs in the rodent and primate neocortex
• Scalable in situ single-cell profiling by electrophoretic capture of mRNA using EEL FISH
• Brain Data Standards - A method for building data-driven cell-type ontologies
• Functional gene delivery to and across brain vasculature of systemic AAVs with endothelial-specific tropism in rodents and broad tropism in primates
• A spatial genome aligner for resolving chromatin architectures from multiplexed DNA FISH
• Characterizing cis-regulatory elements using single-cell epigenomics
• Oligodendrocyte precursor cells ingest axons in the mouse neocortex
• Multi-modal characterization and simulation of human epileptic circuitry
• Spatially resolved epigenomic profiling of single cells in complex tissues
• Single-neuron models linking electrophysiology, morphology, and transcriptomics across cortical cell types
• Evolution of cortical neurons supporting human cognition
• Single-neuron models linking electrophysiology, morphology, and transcriptomics across cortical cell types
  
• Developmental Pathways Are Epigenetically Reprogrammed during Lung Cancer Brain Metastasis
• Cell type matching in single-cell RNA-sequencing data using FR-Match
• Verbal and General IQ Associate with Supragranular Layer Thickness and Cell Properties of the Left Temporal Cortex
• Local connectivity and synaptic dynamics in mouse and human neocortex
• Cellular resolution anatomical and molecular atlases for prenatal human brains
• Cell type ontologies of the Human Cell Atlas
• A multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex