Cell types are human-imposed categories that help people understand biological complexity; nature does not inherently care about those categories.

“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.”