Figure 7.

A theoretical example of circumstantial context. (A) Let Px be a subject from whom a blood sample has been drawn. CD4+CD25+, CD4+CD25- indicate the T-cell subpopulations for which transcriptome profiles have been recorded. Subject P3 carries an unknown genetic variant with limited but functional implication for the expression of some genes. The technical variability of the experiments is sufficiently small to warrant calculation of mean expression profiles. Depending on the circumstantial context either inter-cell type comparisons can be performed in a context-dependent manner (B-D) or subject heterogeneities can be studied (E-H). In either case the divergence between features, and therefore the context-dependency, will determine to what degree the probability profiles can be collapsed upon one another. (Please refer to the discussion section for a detailed description).