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Comment
. 2015 Dec 17;163(7):1566-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2015.12.010.

Cell-to-Cell Transcript Variability: Seeing Signal in the Noise

Kevin A Janes  1
Affiliations
Comment

Cell-to-Cell Transcript Variability: Seeing Signal in the Noise

Kevin A Janes. Cell. .

Abstract

How stochastic is gene expression in mammalian cells? Not very, according to Battich et al., who report that single-cell variability in cytoplasmic mRNAs is remarkably predictable given measurements of a cell's phenotypic state and microenvironment. The noise from transcriptional bursts is buffered by a hallmark of eukaryotes-the nucleus.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Nuclear buffering of a transcriptional regulatory heterogeneity
Basal-like breast epithelia were cultured as 3D spheroids, cryosectioned, and stained for TGFBR3 by RNA FISH as in Wang et al. (2014). Nuclear (solid) and plasma membrane (dashed) borders were highlighted and cytoplasmic transcripts counted visually. The 90% confidence interval is shown for a Poisson random variable with mean of 14.
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References

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