Figure 3.

New technologies can disentagle nongenetic selection from trancriptional reprogramming

(A) Nongenetic inheritance can operate as classical genetic Darwinian selection (i.e. a fitter phenotype is randomly generated before a change in the environment and sweeps through the population) or could be interpreted in a more Lamarckian way (i.e. a change in the external environment elicits a series of coordinate transcriptional responses which can then be fixed and inherited via epigenetic changes).

(B) Feature selection or adaptive response (or a combination of thereof) can be tracked and traced by transforming classical genetic barcodes into transcriptional barcodes (inner colors) which can be captured at the same time of single-cell transcriptional profiles (outer colors). By matching lineages and transcriptomes at multiple time points, scientists can potentially deconvolute intermediate states driving the final resistant phenotype.