Huang Sui
Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics, Biological Sciences Bldg, Room 539D, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T3A 0Y1, Canada.
Development. 2009 Dec;136(23):3853-62. doi: 10.1242/dev.035139.
Cell-to-cell variability of gene expression in clonal populations of mammalian cells is ubiquitous. However, because molecular biologists habitually assume uniformity of the cell populations that serve as starting material for experimental analysis, attention to such non-genetic heterogeneity has been scant. As awareness of, and interest in, understanding its biological significance increases, this Primer attempts to clarify the confusing terminologies used in an emerging field that often conflates heterogeneity with noise, and provides a qualitative introduction to the fundamental dynamic principles that underlie heterogeneity. It thus aims to present a useful conceptual framework to organize, analyze and communicate observations made at the resolution of individual cells that indicate that heterogeneity of cell populations plays a biological role, such as in multipotency and cell fate decision.
哺乳动物细胞克隆群体中基因表达的细胞间变异性普遍存在。然而，由于分子生物学家习惯性地假定用作实验分析起始材料的细胞群体是均匀的，因此对这种非遗传异质性的关注很少。随着对其生物学意义的认识和兴趣的增加，本入门文章试图澄清一个新兴领域中使用的令人困惑的术语，该领域常常将异质性与噪声混为一谈，并对异质性背后的基本动态原理进行定性介绍。因此，它旨在提供一个有用的概念框架，以组织、分析和交流在单个细胞分辨率下所做的观察结果，这些观察结果表明细胞群体的异质性发挥着生物学作用，例如在多能性和细胞命运决定方面。
