Homogeneous group of cells display unique patterns of gene expression. This marked variation is known as cellular noise; a marked characteristics of life.
Pertinent questions pertaining to cellular noise:
What ultimately causes cellular noise?
How does cellular noise change with aging?
What innovative new concepts have been discovered in the area of the cellular noise phenomena?
@Jetty, I did not mean novel as in "new." But novel as in "original" or strikingly interested concept.
There really cannot be a "new" concepts in science b/c scientific phenomena has always existed, not matter what we call it; even if we are now just discovering it ;)
Excellent questions.
-gene expression
-protein expression
-metabolic noise
-environmental noise
Your quesiton which is the "ultimate" cause- I think is hard to answer. Its a "system level" property.
You can look up work by Elowitz et al., Paulsson et al. and Mark Kirschner amongst others for recent advances.
cheers,
c
Interesting question
Chaitanya gave nice answer
the following link give some useful information
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/biologicalnoise/
may be a bit old but good paper, they explained when the difference make difference
Cellular heterogeneity: when do differences make a difference?
Cell. 2010 May 14; 141(4): 559–563. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2010.04.033
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2918286/pdf/nihms-215326.pdf
interesting paper critically analyzed on "impact of noise on molecular network inference"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3855153/pdf/pone.0080735.pdf
The concept of biological noise is pretty novel and is difficult topic in cell biology
It might be pretty novel for you and me. The first article published in 1950 related to biophysics, these people reported physiological effects of fine nerve structures when exposed to sudden fluctuations in the number of light quanta.
FATT P, KATZ B. Some observations on biological noise. Nature. 1950 Oct 7;166(4223):597-8.
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/166597a0
if you search patiently you may get more interesting articles too
Perspect Biol Med. 1968 Autumn;12(1):12-30.
Aging, noise and choice.
Goldman S.
Adv Vet Sci Comp Med. 1978;22:1-28. Review.
Environmental impact on laboratory animals.
Newton WM.
Biosystems. 1983;16(1):9-29.
Noise immunity of the genetic code.
Cullmann G, Labouygues JM.
Aust J Biol Sci. 1983;36(1):77-90.
Intrinsic noise and the design of the genetic machinery.
Reanney DC, MacPhee DG, Pressing J.
Methods Mol Biol. 2011;759:407-25. doi: 10.1007/978-1-61779-173-4_23.
Noise in biological systems: pros, cons, and mechanisms of control.
ACS Synth Biol. 2013 Oct 23. [Epub ahead of print]
Biological Noise Abatement: Coordinating the Responses of Autonomous Bacteria in a Synthetic Biofilm to a Fluctuating Environment Using a Stochastic Bistable Switch.
Nelson EM, Kurz V, Perry N, Kyrouac D, Timp G.
Cellular Decision Making and Biological Noise: From Microbes to Mammals
http://web.mit.edu/biophysics/papers/CELL2011.pdf
@Jetty, I did not mean novel as in "new." But novel as in "original" or strikingly interested concept.
There really cannot be a "new" concepts in science b/c scientific phenomena has always existed, not matter what we call it; even if we are now just discovering it ;)
There are many genes with isoforms or alternately spliced forms within a given tissue (e.g in normal skin progressing towards melanoma). Could this lead to heterogeneity or cellular noise? The signficance of these different forms is hard to understand. Its a bit easier in the case of enzyme isoforms or alternately spliced forms-because one can measure a particular activity. NGS is a great way to identify these different forms, but we need innovative assays that can measure the physiological relvance of different splice and isoforms.
Due to the high level of life complexity and the millions of variables involved in it, most of the processes involved in gene and protein expression are stochastic and can only be estimated by a statistic approximation. When dealing with genes which are intensely expressed, random processes can be neglected, but when low numbers of transcripts are produced randomness can affect gene and protein expression to a great extent just as a consequence of stochasticity. Life is not digital, and thanks to its intrinsic randomness it is much more adaptable.
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