Origins of regulated cell-to-cell variability

Single-cell measurements and lineage-tracing experiments are revealing that phenotypic cell-to-cell variability is often the result of deterministic processes, despite the existence of intrinsic noise in molecular networks. In most cases, this determinism represents largely uncharacterized molecular regulatory mechanisms, which places the study of cell-to-cell variability in the realm of molecular cell biology. Further research in the field will be important to advance quantitative cell biology because it will provide new insights into the mechanisms by which cells coordinate their intracellular activities in the spatiotemporal context of the multicellular environment.