Single-cell RNA-seq can yield valuable insights about the variability within a population of seemingly homogeneous cells. We developed a quantitative statistical method to distinguish true biological variability from the high levels of technical noise in single-cell experiments. Our approach quantifies the statistical significance of observed cell-to-cell variability in expression strength on a gene-by-gene basis. We validate our approach using two independent data sets from Arabidopsis thaliana and Mus musculus.

SummaryT helper 2 (Th2) cells regulate helminth infections, allergic disorders, tumor immunity, and pregnancy by secreting various cytokines. It is likely that there are undiscovered Th2 signaling molecules. Although steroids are known to be immunoregulators, de novo steroid production from immune cells has not been previously characterized. Here, we demonstrate production of the steroid pregnenolone by Th2 cells in vitro and in vivo in a helminth infection model. Single-cell RNA sequencing and quantitative PCR analysis suggest that pregnenolone synthesis in Th2 cells is related to immunosuppression. In support of this, we show that pregnenolone inhibits Th cell proliferation and B cell immunoglobulin class switching. We also show that steroidogenic Th2 cells inhibit Th cell proliferation in a Cyp11a1 enzyme-dependent manner. We propose pregnenolone as a “lymphosteroid,” a steroid produced by lymphocytes. We speculate that this de novo steroid production may be an intrinsic phenomenon of Th2-mediated immune responses to actively restore immune homeostasis.

Evolution and design of protein complexes is almost always viewed through the lens of amino acid mutations at protein interfaces. We showed previously that residues not involved in the physical interaction between proteins make important contributions to oligomerisation by acting indirectly or allosterically. Here, we sought to investigate the mechanism by which allosteric mutations act using the example of the PyrR family of pyrimidine operon attenuators. In this family, a perfectly sequence-conserved helix that forms a tetrameric interface is exposed as solvent-accessible surface in dimeric orthologues. This means that mutations must be acting from a distance to destabilize the interface. We identified eleven key mutations controlling oligomeric state, all distant from the interfaces and outside ligand-binding pockets. Finally, we show that the key mutations introduce conformational changes equivalent to the conformational shift between the free versus the nucleotide-bound conformations of the proteins.