| Popis: |
Accurate measurements of the molecular composition of single cells will be key to elucidating the relationship between gene expression and function in diverse cell types. One of the most important phenotypes that differs between cells is their size, which was recently shown to be an important determinant of proteome composition in populations of similarly sized cells. We therefore sought to test if the effects of cell size on protein concentrations were also evident in single cell proteomics data. Using the relative concentrations of histone proteins to estimate a cell’s DNA-to-cell volume ratio, we found that cell size correlated with the cell-to-cell variance in two single cell proteome datasets, each acquired using different preparation and measurement platforms. Moreover, the proteome differences between small and large single cells significantly correlated with how cell size affects the proteomes of cultured cells measured in bulk. We therefore conclude that cell size accounts for a substantial amount of proteome heterogeneity in single cells and should be considered particularly when comparing cells of a similar type. |
