title: Tracing the sources of cellular variation.
abstract: As the adage says, variety is the spice of life, and despite our best attempts, cells, even those with the same genome, never seem to behave the same. By combining mathematical and experimental analyses, Colman-Lerner and colleagues propose, in a recent issue of Nature, a method to delicately unravel the sources of this variation. Applying their technique to the pheromone response in budding yeast, they show that much of the observed variation originates from cell cycle effects and is dependent on levels of pathway input.
authors.affiliation: Bauer Center for Genomics Research, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Sharad
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ramanathan
authors.forename: Peter S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Swain
mesh_terms: D002453:Cell Cycle / Q000502:physiology; D014644:Genetic Variation; D010675:Pheromones / Q000502:physiology; D012270:Ribosomes / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000166:cytology* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D010675:Pheromones