Analyzing differences between affected and unaffected cells might provide the answer. Increasingly, researchers have taken advantage of modern technology, such as laser capture microscopy to isolate individual cells and microarray analysis to compare their gene expression patterns. How are these types of analyses advancing our understanding of selective cell vulnerability?

Join us on Tuesday, 14 September 2010 at noon, U.S. Eastern Daylight Saving Time, for a Webinar led by Eva Hedlund of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Hedlund will discuss her latest results on ALS, and Chee-Yeun Chung of MIT’s Whitehead Institute will share her data on selective cell vulnerability in Parkinson disease. Rickard Sandberg, also from the Karolinska Institute, will present a new technique—RNA deep sequencing—that allows him to discover not only which mRNAs are present in tissues, cell lines, or single cells, but which splice forms they represent. Joining these presenters for a panel discussion are Stanislav Karsten of the University of California in Los Angeles, and Stephen Ginsberg of the Nathan Kline Institute in Orangeburg, New York. Image credit: Wikicommons/Guillaume Paumier