Josue
Josue
Greater Lawrence Regional Vocational Technical School
Andover, MA
Mentor:
Khalid Shakir
Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research | McCarroll Group
Josue entered the ӳý Summer Scholars Program eager to apply computational approaches to neuroscience, particularly to questions about how the brain changes during development. He joined the McCarroll Lab’s work with the Brain Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN), an ambitious effort to map gene expression across the human brain at single-cell resolution.
For his project, Josue focused on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region involved in memory and reasoning, and explored how gene expression varies across younger donors. Unlike bulk RNA sequencing, which averages gene activity across many cells, the single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data used in his work preserves the unique transcriptome of each cell, allowing fine-grained analysis.
After training in R, Tidyverse, and GitHub, Josue subset BICAN’s extensive dataset to donors aged 25–39 and ensured the data passed strict quality control measures. He performed statistical analyses to identify genes with age-dependent expression patterns, generating visualizations such as heatmaps and boxplots to highlight cell-type-specific trends. His results showed that some genes exhibited strong, consistent shifts in expression with age, while others remained stable — evidence that brain aging is highly gene- and cell-type-specific, even within a relatively young cohort.
These findings contribute to BICAN’s broader mission of building a detailed atlas of brain cell diversity, which will serve as a resource for researchers studying neurodevelopment and age-related disorders. Through this work, Josue developed skills in computational biology, data visualization, and collaborative problem-solving. His findings contribute directly to BICAN’s mission of creating a publicly accessible brain atlas, ensuring that researchers worldwide can explore how developmental changes in gene expression shape cognition and disease.
Reflecting on his experience, he said, “BSSP was an amazing experience that provided me with the opportunity to explore computational research and be a part of an inclusive scientific community.” His summer not only advanced an important neuroscience project but also solidified his confidence in tackling large-scale data challenges and strengthened his commitment to a career at the intersection of biology and computation.
