Cell-to-cell expression dispersion of B-cell surface proteins displays genetic variation among humans

Abstract

Ph: +33 4 72 72 87 17, Gael.Yvert@ens-lyon.fr 2 ABSTRACT Variability in gene expression across a population of homogeneous cells is known to influence various biological processes. In model organisms, natural genetic variants were found that modify expression dispersion (variability at a fixed mean) but whether such effects exist in humans has not been fully demonstrated. Here, we analyzed single-cell expression of four proteins (CD23, CD55, CD63 and CD86) across cell lines derived from individuals of the Yoruba population. Using data from over 30 million cells, we found substantial interindividual variation of dispersion. We demonstrate, via de novo cell line generation and subcloning experiments, that this variation exceeds the variation associated with cellular immortalization. By association mapping, we linked the expression dispersion of CD63 to the rs971 SNP. Our results show that human DNA variants can have inherently-probabilistic effects on gene expression. Such subtle genetic effects may participate to phenotypic variation and disease predisposition.

Entropy as a measure of variability and stemness in single-cell transcriptomics

“…All measures of molecular variability are influenced by a variety of potentially confounding factors, including a gene's mean expression [19]. Some author proposed to condition CV values on mean by computing the residuals of a non-parametric loess regression of CV-mean [69] to eliminate such a mean dependency.…”