Cell Types Tool
This tool is designed to guide proteomic-level marker choices for flow cytometry assays including cell surface proteins, intracellular proteins, and transcription factors. Reproducibility and the ability to correlate cumulative results into meaningful conclusions is dependent upon consensus and uniformity in how we name different cell populations and which markers we use simultaneously to define them. In flow cytometry this is commonly called the definitive phenotype, or the least number of markers employed to define the cellular ontology. There are a few efforts to standardize cellular ontology, including the Human Cell Atlas1 2 and the Ontology Lookup Service (OLS)3. There are still many factors that influence the definitive phenotypes proposed here including age of the organism, sample type, sample treatment and tissue of origin. Also, fundamentally, the function of the cell is the ultimate indicator of ontology, and a consensus is still required on the most accurate downstream functional assays for functional validation that might yet add to the completeness of this tool. To submit a peer-reviewed publication that would contribute to updating this tool, please contact us.
1. https://www.humancellatlas.org/
2. Osumi-Sutherland, D., Xu, C., Keays, M. et al. Cell type ontologies of the Human Cell Atlas. Nat Cell Biol 23, 1129–1135 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-021-00787-7
3. https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4/ontologies/cl
