Understanding brain function and evolution with barcodes and sequencing

We ask how new brain regions and cell types form in evolution, how they connect to the rest of the brain, and what this tells us about the organizing principles and function of the vertebrate brain. To do so, we employ spatial transcriptomics across widely divergent vertebrate species and development, and develop new barcoding technologies to map neuronal connectivity at single cell resolution in high throughput by converting anatomy into a sequencing problem. Here we apply these technologies to the cerebellar nuclei and present viral tracing tools for species ranging from amphibians to monkeys.