  Populations of mammalian stem cells commonly exhibit considerable cell-cell
variability. However, the functional role of this diversity is unclear. Here,
we analyze expression fluctuations of the stem cell surface marker Sca1 in
mouse hematopoietic progenitor cells using a simple stochastic model and find
that the observed dynamics naturally lie close to a critical state, thereby
producing a diverse population that is able to respond rapidly to environmental
changes. We propose an information-theoretic interpretation of these results
that views cellular multipotency as an instance of maximum entropy statistical
inference.
