The nature and nurture of cell heterogeneity: accounting for macrophage gene-environment interactions with single-cell RNA-Seq.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Single-cell RNA-Seq can be a valuable and unbiased tool to dissect cellular heterogeneity, despite the transcriptome's limitations in describing higher functional phenotypes and protein events. Perhaps the most important shortfall with transcriptomic 'snapshots' of cell populations is that they risk being descriptive, only cataloging heterogeneity at one point in time, and without microenvironmental context. Studying the genetic ('nature') and environmental ('nurture') modifiers of heterogeneity, and how cell population dynamics unfold over time in response to these modifiers is key when studying highly plastic cells such as macrophages.

Results

We introduce the programmable Polaris™ microfluidic lab-on-chip for single-cell sequencing, which performs live-cell ima

SUBMITTER: Wills QF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5219790 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature