Stem cells offer great potential in biomedical engineering because they’re pluripotent—meaning they can multiply indefinitely and develop into any of the hundreds of different kinds of cells and tissues in the body. But in trying to tap these cells’ creative potential, it has so far been hard to pinpoint the precise biological mechanisms and genetic makeups that dictate how stem cells diverge on the path to development.

Part of the challenge, according to James Collins, PhD, a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, is that not all stem cells are created the same. “Stem cell colonies contain much variability between individual cells. This has been considered somewhat problematic for developing predictive approaches in stem cell engineering,” he says.

But now, Collins and Boston Children’s Hospital’s George Q. Daley, MD, PhD, have used a new, very sensitive single-cell genetic profiling method to reveal how the variability in pluripotent stem cells runs way deeper than we thought.

While at first glimmer, it could appear this would make predictive stem cell engineering more difficult, it might actually present an opportunity to exert even more programmable control over stem cell differentiation and development than was originally envisioned. “What was previously considered problematic variability could actually be beneficial to our ability to precisely control stem cells,” says Collins. …