ReviewBioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology2016
Variation is function: Are single cell differences functionally important?: Testing the hypothesis that single cell variation is required for aggregate function.
Review in BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed.
- Assessing the variation of DNA damage response of individual human cells exposed to photon radiation.Radiation and environmental biophysics · 2026Article
- Assessment of dispersion metrics for estimating single-cell transcriptional variability.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- The Rayleigh Quotient and Contrastive Principal Component Analysis I.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Differential Responses of Human iPSC-Derived Microglia to Stimulation with Diverse Inflammogens.Cells · 2025Article
- Lineage memory shapes viral resistance barriers in human skin.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Population Thinking and the Uniqueness of Biological Entities.Acta biotheoretica · 2025Article
- Single-cell analyses reveal increased gene expression variability in human neurodevelopmental conditions.American journal of human genetics · 2025Article
- Exploring cell-to-cell variability and functional insights through differentially variable gene analysis.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2025Article
- Single-Cell RNA Sequencing Reveals Extensive Heterogeneity and Unique Gene Trajectories in Non-Transformed and Transformed Human Lung Epithelial Cells: Insights into the Role of LncRNAs in Tumor Heterogeneity.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Nanopore approaches for single-molecule temporal omics: promises and challenges.Nature methods · 2025Review
- Bax- Bcl-xL interaction dynamics during the progression of cell cycle and cell death using FLIM-FRET.Cell stress · 2025Review
- Controlled noise: evidence of epigenetic regulation of single-cell expression variability.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- scTenifoldXct: A semi-supervised method for predicting cell-cell interactions and mapping cellular communication graphs.Cell systems · 2023Article
- Subcellular omics: a new frontier pushing the limits of resolution, complexity and throughput.Nature methods · 2023Article
- Single-cell analysis reveals TLR-induced macrophage heterogeneity and quorum sensing dictate population wide anti-inflammatory feedback in response to LPS.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- Revising immune cell coordination: Origins and importance of single-cell variation.European journal of immunology · 2022Review
- Enhanced transcriptional heterogeneity mediated by NF-κB super-enhancers.PLoS genetics · 2022Article
- Gaucher disease - more than just a rare lipid storage disease.Journal of molecular medicine (Berlin, Germany) · 2022Review
- Behavioral Neuroscience in the Era of Genomics: Tools and Lessons for Analyzing High-Dimensional Datasets.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Critical Evaluation of Current Hypotheses for the Pathogenesis of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There is a growing appreciation of the extent of transcriptome variation across individual cells of the same cell type. While expression variation may be a byproduct of, for example, dynamic or homeostatic processes, here we consider whether single-cell molecular variation per se might be crucial for population-level function. Under this hypothesis, molecular variation indicates a diversity of hidden functional capacities within an ensemble of identical cells, and this functional diversity facilitates collective behavior that would be inaccessible to a homogenous population. In reviewing this topic, we explore possible functions that might be carried by a heterogeneous ensemble of cells; however, this question has proven difficult to test, both because methods to manipulate molecular variation are limited and because it is complicated to define, and measure, population-level function. We consider several possible methods to further pursue the hypothesis that variation is function through the use of comparative analysis and novel experimental techniques.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.