Even genetically identical cells have heterogeneous properties because of stochasticity in gene or protein expression. Single cell techniques that assay heterogeneous properties would be valuable for basic science and diseases like cancer, where accurate estimates of tumor properties is critical for accurate diagnosis and grading. Cell morphology is an emergent outcome of many cellular processes, potentially carrying information about cell properties at the single cell level. Here we study whether morphological parameters are sufficient for classification of single cells, using a set of 15 cell lines, representing three processes: (i) the transformation of normal cells using specific genetic mutations; (ii) metastasis in breast cancer and (iii) metastasis in osteosarcomas. Cellular morphology is defined as quantitative measures of the shape of the cell and the structure of the actin. We use a toolbox that calculates quantitative morphological parameters of cell images and apply it to hundreds of images of cells belonging to different cell lines. Using a combination of dimensional reduction and machine learning, we test whether these different processes have specific morphological signatures and whether single cells can be classified based on morphology alone. Using morphological parameters we could accurately classify cells as belonging to the correct class with high accuracy. Morphological signatures could distinguish between cells that were different only because of a different mutation on a parental line. Furthermore, both oncogenesis and metastasis appear to be characterized by stereotypical morphology changes. Thus, cellular morphology is a signature of cell phenotype, or state, at the single cell level.

由于基因或蛋白质表达的随机性，即使是遗传上相同的细胞也具有异质性。分析异质特性的单细胞技术对于基础科学和疾病（如癌症）将是有价值的，在这些疾病中，准确估计肿瘤特性对于准确诊断和分级至关重要。细胞形态学是许多细胞过程的新兴结果，可能在单个细胞水平上携带有关细胞特性的信息。在这里，我们使用代表15个细胞系的15个细胞系来研究形态学参数是否足以分类单个细胞：（i）使用特定的基因突变转化正常细胞；（ii）乳腺癌转移和（iii）骨肉瘤转移。细胞形态被定义为细胞形状和肌动蛋白结构的定量度量。我们使用一个工具箱来计算细胞图像的定量形态参数，并将其应用于属于不同细胞系的数百个细胞图像。结合降维和机器学习，我们测试了这些不同的过程是否具有特定的形态学特征，以及是否可以仅基于形态学对单个细胞进行分类。使用形态学参数，我们可以准确地将细胞准确分类为正确的分类。形态特征可以区分仅由于亲本系中的不同突变而不同的细胞。此外，癌变和转移似乎都以定型形态变化为特征。