Chemical cytometry: the chemical analysis of single cells

Autor: Colin D. Whitmore, Emily H. Turner, Daniella Cohen, Haley R. Pugsley, Norman J. Dovichi, Cuiru Zhu, David G. Gomez
Rok vydání: 2007
Předmět:
Zdroj: Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. 390:223-226
ISSN: 1618-2650
1618-2642
DOI: 10.1007/s00216-007-1665-5
Popis: The long-term goal of systems biology is to predict the response of an organism to a genetic or environmental change. However, such predictions are extremely challenging for whole organisms, even for the simplest organism. Instead, it is common to consider the response of a cellular population, such as a culture, tissue, or organ, as a simplifying approximation. In most systems biology studies, the ensemble of cells is homogenized, and the composition of the homogenate is analyzed, which provides information on the average composition of the ensemble. Software combines this compositional information with kinetic and thermodynamic constants for enzymes and receptors, in an attempt to mimic the function and behavior of the organism. Clearly, analysis of a cellular homogenate is an approximation. In some cases, such an approximation is appropriate. The composition of cells in a healthy tissue does not appear to change significantly across the population. Similarly, many cell cultures appear to be relatively homogeneous, particularly if the cells are synchronized at a particular phase of the cell cycle. In contrast, study of homogenized cells is inappropriate whenever there is a large cell-to-cell variation in composition. Consider the case of two cellular populations (Fig. 1). In one case, the population is homogeneous, where each cell contains a small fraction of some particular component. In this case, analysis of the homogenized culture provides an accurate reproduction of the original population. In the other case, most cells lack the component of interest, which is only found is a small subset of the population. Homogenization destroys all information on the distribution of the component in the population. Accurate reproduction of the composition, and accurate modeling of the behavior of the population, requires analysis of the population on a cellby-cell basis.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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