Genome-wide Correlation between mRNA and Protein in a Single Cell

摘要

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project a decade ago, much progress has been made towards determining and understanding the transcriptome and the proteome. After all, DNA is no more than a template which is systematically converted into mRNA which controls protein synthesis and life itself. A major difficulty when studying transcriptome and sproteome is that gene expression in each cell is unique. Even within a given tissue, age, cell cycle, environment, signal transduction, and other stochastic events all contribute to this diversity. On the other hand, the sensitivity of standard analytical methods typically requires a large number of cells for the comprehensive quantification of mRNAs or proteins. Since there is no such thing as an "average" cell, our understanding of the biological system is incomplete. Advances in transcriptomics and proteomics at the level of single cells are therefore badly needed.