Dissecting Particle Uptake Heterogeneity in a Cell Population Using Bayesian Analysis (Biophysical Journal)

Individual cells in a solution display variable uptake of nanomaterials, peptides, and nutrients. Such variability reflects their heterogeneity in endocytic capacity. In a recent work, we have shown that the endocytic capacity of a cell depends on its size and surface density of endocytic components (transporters). We also demonstrated that in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells, the cell-surface transporter density (n) may decay with cell radius (r) following the power rule n ~ r?, where ? ? -1. In this work, we investigate how n and r may independently contribute to the endocytic heterogeneity of a cell population.