Growing up in Klang, Malaysia, Chee-Huat Linus Eng took a particular interest in the hows of life, beginning with an early curiosity about how vitamin C impacts skin cells. Now, after completing a doctorate in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, Eng is taking the field of spatial genomics by storm.
As vice president of R&D at Spatial Genomics, Eng focuses on a deceptively simple task: capturing a cell’s genetic activity at a specific point in time. That activity is recorded in RNA transcripts, which are copies of the information encoded by a particular gene sequence. Together the different types of RNA transcripts make up a cell’s transcriptome. Scientists could already capture this transcriptome for a single cell isolated from the tissue around it, but Eng and his Caltech colleagues wanted to capture the information while the cell remained in situ.
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Christie Hemm Klok
Most recently, Eng has created seqFISH+, a technology based on sequential fluorescence in situ hybridization, which lets scientists use fluorescent probes to detect specific proteins and other molecules. With seqFISH+, researchers can capture a cell’s entire transcriptome—tens of thousands of genes—and observe how their expression changes according to whether the cell is near, for example, a cancer cell or an immune cell.
Eng’s adviser at Caltech, Long Cai, says Eng’s “transformative contributions” to the field of spatial genomics have “fundamentally changed how scientists visualize and understand cellular biology.” The “versatility and broad applicability” of Eng’s method, Cai says, mean it can elucidate what cells are doing in ways that are useful in many diverse areas, including developmental biology, neuroscience, cancer research, immunology and microbiology.
“Any field requiring a spatial map of gene expression stands to benefit from this technology,” Eng says.
This article is part of “The Young American Scientists,” an editorially independent project that was produced with financial support from Regeneron. Special thanks to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where Eng's portrait and video interview were captured.