Department of Pharmacology, Green Center for Systems Biology, Simmons Cancer Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75390, USA.
Cell. 2010 May 14;141(4):559-63. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.04.033.
A central challenge of biology is to understand how individual cells process information and respond to perturbations. Much of our knowledge is based on ensemble measurements. However, cell-to-cell differences are always present to some degree in any cell population, and the ensemble behaviors of a population may not represent the behaviors of any individual cell. Here, we discuss examples of when heterogeneity cannot be ignored and describe practical strategies for analyzing and interpreting cellular heterogeneity.
生物学的一个核心挑战是理解单个细胞如何处理信息并对干扰做出响应。我们的很多知识都基于整体测量。然而,在任何细胞群体中,细胞间的差异总是存在一定程度的,群体的整体行为可能无法代表任何单个细胞的行为。在这里,我们讨论了一些不能忽视异质性的情况,并描述了分析和解释细胞异质性的实用策略。