Parameter estimation in FACS-seq enables high-throughput characterization of phenotypic heterogeneity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new parameter estimation method in FACS-seq that enables high-throughput analysis of phenotypic heterogeneity, facilitating the characterization of thousands of variants simultaneously to better understand cellular diversity.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel parameter estimation approach in FACS-seq that allows for large-scale phenotypic profiling of genetic variants, advancing high-throughput heterogeneity analysis.

Findings

Successfully estimated expression properties of thousands of variants

Demonstrated the model's ability to decipher phenotypic heterogeneity mechanisms

Enabled high-throughput characterization in FACS-seq experiments

Abstract

Phenotypic heterogeneity is a most fascinating property of a population of cells, which shows the differences among individuals even with the same genetic background and extracellular environmental conditions. However, the lack of high-throughput analysis of phenotypic diversity has limited our research progress. To deal with it, we constructed a novel parameter estimation method in FACS-seq, a commonly used experimental framework, to achieve simultaneous characterization of thousands of variants in a library. We further demonstrated the model's ability in estimating the expression properties of each variant, which we believe can help to decipher the mechanisms of phenotypic heterogeneity.