Cell types are human-imposed categories that help people understand biological complexity, rather than categories used by nature itself.

“People are not as clear as, as it is with disassociated cells. So again, taking, taking this a bit simpler, I think if we look at the space of disassociated cells and we look at these groups, we have this beautiful metaphor of what we humans call a cell type, which, you know, nature doesn't care about, right?”

“This is just us putting categories on top of stuff, but it helps us understand this complexity. I don't think we have a similar metaphor for local niches of cells.”