A conserved expression signature predicts growth rate and reveals cell & lineage-specific differences

By performing RNA-seq on cells FACS sorted by their proliferation rate, this study identifies a gene expression signature capable of predicting proliferation rates in diverse eukaryotic cell types and species. This signature, applied to scRNAseq data from C.elegans, reveals lineage-specific differences in proliferation during development. In contrast to the universality of the proliferation signature, mitochondria and metabolism related genes show a high degree of cell-type specificity; mouse pluripotent stem cells (mESCs) and differentiated cells (fibroblasts) exhibit opposite relations between mitochondria state and proliferation. Furthermore, we identified a slow proliferating subpopulation of mESCs with higher expression of pluripotency genes. Finally, we show that fast and slow proliferating subpopulations are differentially sensitive to mitochondria inhibitory drugs in different cell types.