Analysis of individual cells identifies cell‐to‐cell variability following induction of cellular senescence

• DOI: 10.1111/acel.12632
• Publication Date: 2017-07-12T04:08:39Z
• Authors: Christopher D. Wiley; James M. Flynn; Christapher Morri...; Ronald Lebofsky; Joe Shuga; Xiao Dong; Marc A. Unger; Jan Vijg; Simon Melov; Judith Campisi
• Keywords: Senescence; Cell type

Summary Senescent cells play important roles in both physiological and pathological processes, including cancer aging. In all cases, however, senescent comprise only a small fraction of tissues. phenotypes have been studied largely relatively homogeneous populations cultured cells. vivo , are generally identified by number markers, but whether how these markers vary among individual is unknown. We therefore utilized combination single‐cell isolation nanofluidic PCR platform to determine the contributions overall gene expression profile human fibroblast populations. Individual were surprisingly heterogeneous their signatures. This cell‐to‐cell variability resulted loss correlation several senescence‐associated genes. Many genes encoding secretory phenotype ( SASP ) factors, major contributor effects showed marked with subset highly induced accounting for increases observed at population level. Inflammatory clustered genomic loci greater senescence compared nonclustered loci, suggesting that coregulated location. Together, data offer new insights into regulated suggest single inadequate identify .