Fig. 1

Single-cell heterogeneity leads to overlapping cell populations. a Each row corresponds to one fluorescent marker; columns show different nuclei selected from GFP-progerin repressed controls. Nuclear shapes (green contours) were extracted from the DAPI channel and mapped onto the other channels. Typical healthy cells (first six columns) exhibit normal lamin B1 expression, little DNA damage, no expression of progerin, and round nuclear shape, as expected for GFP-progerin repressed controls. Atypical cells (two rightmost columns) exhibit characteristics of progeria, namely reduced lamin B1 expression, increased DNA damage in the γH2AX channel, expression of progerin, and blebbed nuclear shape. b Distribution of the metric that best separates the two types of controls in each channel, based on all cells in the control samples (green: GFP-progerin repressed cells, red: GFP-progerin expressing cells). Note that the contours obtained from the DAPI channel appear slightly smaller and misaligned with the images obtained in the lamin B1 channel (see Additional file 1: Figure S2 for the analysis of cross-channel discrepancies). The scale bar is 5 μm