Single-cell variability

Single-cell analysis allows scientists to study the properties of a single cell of interest with high accuracy, revealing individual differences among populations and offering new insights in molecular biology.

Thus, single-cell analysis allows researchers to study biological processes in finer detail and answer questions that could not have been addressed otherwise.

Thus, accurate measurement of gene expression in individual cells allows researchers to better understand these critical aspects of cellular biology.

A population of single celled organisms like bacteria typically vary slightly in their DNA sequence due to mutations acquired during reproduction.

Within a single human, individual cells typically have identical genomes, though there are interesting exceptions, such as B-cells, which have variation in their DNA enabling them to generate different antibodies to bind to the variety of pathogens that can attack the body.

Measuring the differences and the rate of change in DNA content at the single-cell level can help scientists better understand how pathogens develop antibiotic resistance, why the immune system often cannot produce antibodies for rapidly mutating viruses like HIV, and other important phenomena.

Also, proteins have many other important features besides simply being present or absent, such as whether have undergone posttranslational modifications such as phosphorylation, or are bound to molecules of interest.

Cytometry, surface methods, and microfluidics technologies are the three classes of tools commonly used to profile the proteomes of individual cells.

[9] Cytometry allows researchers to isolate cells of interest, and stain 15–30 proteins to measure their location and/or relative abundance.

Researchers who study development may be interested in tracking the physical characteristics of the individual progeny in a growing population in order to understand how stem cells differentiate into a complex tissue or organism over time.