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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Apr 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Syst Biol. 2017 Dec 6;8:7–15. doi: 10.1016/j.coisb.2017.11.011

Figure 3. Capturing dynamic transcription regulation at a single timepoint.

Figure 3

The plot shows a hypothetical gene regulatory interaction Gene A → Gene B, where the protein product of Gene A promotes the expression of Gene B (i.e. the interaction between a transcription factor and its gene target). This interaction may be present in every cell of a population; however, each cell may be at different stages of the regulatory process at any given point in time. As such, fixing the population at a single time point (as is done for smFISH and scRNA-seq) may yield different combinations of Gene A and Gene B mRNA with no apparent correlation at the single cell level. As illustrated in the figure, the half-lives of both mRNA species may affect the degree to which they overlap in time (highlighted in yellow) within a single cell.