Cover image

Cover Illustration: A composite image of cultured human pancreatic islet cells illustrating the heterogeneity in expression within cells obtained from a single islet preparation. Insulin (green), C-peptide (yellow), smooth muscle actin (magenta), vimentin (cyan), β-actin (red), and vimentin-C-peptide and insulin (brown). Nuclei are counterstained with Hoechst 33342 (blue). Images were obtained with an LSM Meta confocal microscope. (Image courtesy Anandwardhan A. Hardikar.) With such heterogeneity of cells, it is important to design protocols that can estimate mRNAs and their regulatory microRNAs at the level of single cells. For more information on these methods, see Quantitative Estimation of Multiple miRNAs and mRNAs from a Single Cell (doi:10.1101/pdb.prot5478).