Single cell RNA sequencing allows us to study all genes that are being used in a single cell. However powerful this method is, it leaves us with thousands of data points for each cell and we study thousands of cells per experiment. Hence, there is a big need to develop computational methods that can deal with this kind of "big data".
Christin Sünkel studied biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Bayreuth. As a student intern at the Rockefeller University in New York City, in the laboratory of Thomas Tuschl she worked on the role of certain RNA-binding proteins. Her studies were supported by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. For her master thesis she moved to the laboratory of Nikolaus Rajewsky at Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine / Berlin Institute for Medical System Biology in Berlin to develop in vitro methods for the study of circular RNAs. Now she is pursuing her PhD in Nikolaus Rajewsky’s lab focusing on the function of circular RNAs and on the development of a method to study single cell gene expression in a spatial context. Her PhD work is supported by the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, Signgene and MDC BOOST.