Dynamical systems theory as an organizing principle for single-cell biology

The emergence of single-cell transcriptomics has given us novel views of gene expression heterogeneity and cellular trajectories in development and disease at unprecedented resolution. However, an overarching theoretical framework to interpret single-cell gene expression data is lacking. Here we argue that dynamical systems theory can provide an interpretable, causal, and quantitative perspective to understand and analyze these enormously rich data sets, in addition to yielding potential benefits for health care.