Reply to Edemir: Physiological regulation and single-cell RNA sequencing

Tacitly, Edemir (1) points to an important issue in the interpretation of data from single-cell RNA-sequencing experiments. Any given cell can exist in a variety of regulatory states that are affected both by extracellular signals and the prior history of the cell. Consequently, data from single-cell RNA sequencing, such as carried out in our paper (2), provide only a partial characterization of a given cell type. Workers engaged in large-scale attempts to identify transcriptomes of every cell type in the body (3) would do well to take note of this … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: maurice_burg{at}nih.gov. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1