Dissecting cell-to-cell regulatory heterogeneity by stochastic profiling
There is tremendous enthusiasm for using the power of transcriptomics to unravel the state of single cells in tissues and tumors. If a single-cell profiling method is to be meaningful, however, it must be i) technically reproducible, ii) sensitive to low-abundance molecules, and iii) compatible with cells isolated in situ. There are many exciting techniques under development to profile the transcriptomes of single cells; unfortunately, none of them meet any of these three criteria.