How to address cellular heterogeneity by distribution biology

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in understanding cellular heterogeneity by analyzing distribution dynamics at single-cell resolution, integrating physics, information theory, and omics approaches.

Contribution

It introduces a framework combining diverse methods to analyze heterogeneity dynamics, emphasizing the importance of distribution-based analysis in multicellular biology.

Findings

Distribution analysis reveals key heterogeneity patterns.

Integrative approaches enhance understanding of cell-to-cell variability.

Single-cell resolution is crucial for accurate heterogeneity characterization.

Abstract

Cellular heterogeneity is an immanent property of biological systems that covers very different aspects of life ranging from genetic diversity to cell-to-cell variability driven by stochastic molecular interactions, and noise induced cell differentiation. Here, we review recent developments in characterizing cellular heterogeneity by distributions and argue that understanding multicellular life requires the analysis of heterogeneity dynamics at single cell resolution by integrative approaches that combine methods from non-equilibrium statistical physics, information theory and omics biology.