The ability of cells to correctly respond to their environments is the basis of all development, tissue repair and immunity. “It sends us back to the drawing board to figure out what is really going on in cells.”Ĭell signaling governs basic cellular activities and coordinates cell actions in the human body. “This really surprised us,” said study co-author Stephen Quake, PhD, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford, investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a leader in the field of microfluidics. “Population studies have not revealed the intricate network of information one observes at the single cell level.” “While the outcome of activation may be the same, the process the cells use to achieve this outcome is very different,” the study authors wrote. The new study, using an imaging system developed at Stanford based on microfluidics, shows that scientists have been misled by the results of the cell-population-based studies. Up to now, most of the scientific information gathered on cell signaling has been obtained from populations of cells using bulk assays due to technological limitations on the ability to examine each individual cell. “One little trumpet starts to play, and the cells go off on their own riffs.
Covert’s lab studies complex genetic systems.
“Think of cells as musicians in a jazz band,” said Markus Covert, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering and senior author of the study, published online in Nature June 27. Using new technology that allows scientists to monitor how individual cells react in the complex system of cell signaling, Stanford University researchers have uncovered a much larger spectrum of differences between each cell than ever seen before.Ĭells don’t all act in a uniform fashion, as was previously thought.
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