Deep Learning Algorithms Identify Structures in Living Cells

These issues were on biomedical engineer Greg Johnson's mind when he joined the Allen Institute for Cell Science in Seattle in 2016. Johnson, whose doctoral work at Carnegie Mellon University had focused on creating computational tools to model cellular structures (see "Robert Murphy Bets Self Driving Instruments Will Crack Biology's Mysteries" here), was hired as part of a group of researchers working to build a 3-D model of a cell. According to Johnson, one of the key aims of the project, dubbed the "Allen Integrated Cell," was to develop a tool to help visualize changes in the spatial organization of cells as they move from one state to another--for example, from a pluripotent stem cell to a differentiated heart cell.