Automated identification of stratifying signatures in cellular subpopulations

RV Bruggner, B Bodenmiller, DL Dill… - Proceedings of the …, 2014 - National Acad Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014National Acad Sciences
Elucidation and examination of cellular subpopulations that display condition-specific
behavior can play a critical contributory role in understanding disease mechanism, as well
as provide a focal point for development of diagnostic criteria linking such a mechanism to
clinical prognosis. Despite recent advancements in single-cell measurement technologies,
the identification of relevant cell subsets through manual efforts remains standard practice.
As new technologies such as mass cytometry increase the parameterization of single-cell …
Elucidation and examination of cellular subpopulations that display condition-specific behavior can play a critical contributory role in understanding disease mechanism, as well as provide a focal point for development of diagnostic criteria linking such a mechanism to clinical prognosis. Despite recent advancements in single-cell measurement technologies, the identification of relevant cell subsets through manual efforts remains standard practice. As new technologies such as mass cytometry increase the parameterization of single-cell measurements, the scalability and subjectivity inherent in manual analyses slows both analysis and progress. We therefore developed Citrus (cluster identification, characterization, and regression), a data-driven approach for the identification of stratifying subpopulations in multidimensional cytometry datasets. The methodology of Citrus is demonstrated through the identification of known and unexpected pathway responses in a dataset of stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells measured by mass cytometry. Additionally, the performance of Citrus is compared with that of existing methods through the analysis of several publicly available datasets. As the complexity of flow cytometry datasets continues to increase, methods such as Citrus will be needed to aid investigators in the performance of unbiased—and potentially more thorough—correlation-based mining and inspection of cell subsets nested within high-dimensional datasets.
National Acad Sciences