Essentially all cells in an organism’s body have the same genetic blueprint, or genome, but the set of genes that are actively expressed at any given time in a cell determines what type of cell it will be and its function. How rapidly gene expression in a single cell changes over time can provide insight into how cells might become more specialized, but current measurement approaches are limited. A new method developed by researchers at Penn State and Yale University incorporates spatial information from the cell as well as data from cells processed at different times, improving researchers’ ability to understand the nuances of gene expression changes.
New method tracks gene expression changes to reveal cell fate decisions
