Inferring the structures of signaling motifs from paired dynamic traces of single cells
Fig 2
A single signaling motif can explain the correlation between upstream signals and downstream responses in single cells.
(A) Experimentally measured values for cell-to-cell variation in signal height and delay were used to generate a large number of simulated signaling patterns. Each trace represents a unique upstream signal from an individual cell. (B) Average (top) and single-cell (bottom) signaling patterns for upstream signals (left) and downstream responses (right) for 50 simulated cells. While X is generated using the approach in panel A, the downstream responses are calculated using the signaling motif (middle). Here, Z if produced by the incoherent feed forward loop. A single signaling motif translates 50 upstream signals into 50 downstream responses. Each row corresponds to an individual cell. Color represents the fold change. (C) There is a correlation between the upstream and downstream signals that is not present if the cells are shuffled. Black dots are from paired cells and grey dots are from shuffled cells. The red line is a correlation line for the paired cells. The unpaired cells do not have any correlation.