Ever wondered how blood cells know how to behave?

DNA is the blueprint which gives our cells instructions, but all of our cells have the same set of instructions, so to understand how cells behave differently we need to look at each one more deeply and explore which of the thousands of genetic instructions are turned off and on at any time.

In recent years we’ve studied gene expression by sequencing molecules inside the cells called mRNA, but this is the copy paper that the genetic instructions are written onto, and not the proteins which are built from those instructions. Now, scientists at the Finsen Laboratory and BRIC, DTU and the Helmholtz Munich have used a method which looks at the unique combination of proteins being built in each cell at any given moment in its development.

This so-called single-cell proteomic analysis means bypassing the mRNA intermediates and building a map of the proteins present in each cell during their differentiation from stem cells into mature blood cells. Looking at each cell means that you can find outliers which would otherwise be lost in the average of the sample.

Bo Porse, of Finsen Lab and BRIC, says: “The process of cell differentiation is immensely complex, and we need to fully understand the nuances of what’s happening inside each cell at each stage of its life to address the cases when the process goes wrong. With this study we’ve shown the feasibility of using this technology to accurately model the exact stages of gene expression, covering both mRNA synthesis and decay, and subsequent protein synthesis and decay throughout cell differentiation”.

Co-Senior Authors

Bo Porse, of Finsen Laboratory at Rigshospitalet and the Biotech Research and Innovation Centre (University of Copenhagen)

Fabian Theis, Director at the Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich, and Professor for Mathematical Modeling of Biological Systems at the Technical University of Munich.

Erwin Schoof, Associate Professor and Head of the Cell Diversity Lab at the Department for Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Technical University of Denmark.

Read the full article 'Zooming in reveals a world of detail: breakthrough method unveils the inner workings of our cells' in Science.