Cellular properties emerge from operations of macromolecular machineries comprising interacting components, each often implemented as one of multiple variants encoded by a gene family. Thus variations of cell properties often result from differential expression of select gene family members with characteristic biochemical and biophysical properties that confer customized features to cellular machines (Hartwell et al., 1999). We hypothesized that phenotypic differences among PCPs result from systematic differential transcription across multiple gene families. Our experimental design, whereby single cell transcriptomes derive from 6 PCPs, provided an effective assay to systematically screen for such gene ensembles that distinguish PCPs.
