# Significance of a cluster of primary and metastatic cell line
**URL:** https://forum.depmap.org/t/significance-of-a-cluster-of-primary-and-metastatic-cell-line/1287
**Category:** Q&A
**Tags:** omics
**Created:** [March 28, 2022, 11:45am UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/significance-of-a-cluster-of-primary-and-metastatic-cell-line/1287 "2022-03-28T11:45:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Subasree](https://forum.depmap.org/u/Subasree)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2022, 11:45am UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/significance-of-a-cluster-of-primary-and-metastatic-cell-line/1287/1 "2022-03-28T11:45:56Z")
To build metabolic models using transcriptomics expression data of a cancer type, is it advisable to choose the primary and metastatic cell line belonging to the single cluster?
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### Author:  [@pmontgom](https://forum.depmap.org/u/pmontgom)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2022, 2:48am UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/significance-of-a-cluster-of-primary-and-metastatic-cell-line/1287/2 "2022-04-16T02:48:13Z")
We don’t have experience building such models and can’t comment on the best approaches for doing that.
Thanks,
Phil
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### Author:  [@Subasree](https://forum.depmap.org/u/Subasree)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2022, 6:20am UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/significance-of-a-cluster-of-primary-and-metastatic-cell-line/1287/3 "2022-04-16T06:20:26Z")
Ok. Thanks.
Can you throw some light on the basis of clusters? What exactly does it mean if a group of cell lines is assigned a single cluster?
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### Author:  [@pmontgom](https://forum.depmap.org/u/pmontgom)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2022, 8:58pm UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/significance-of-a-cluster-of-primary-and-metastatic-cell-line/1287/4 "2022-05-06T20:58:12Z")
The clusters you’re referring to are those in the cellligner analysis, correct?
If that’s the case, I believe that they’re based on the distances in the N-dimensional space that the cell lines and tumors were co-embedded within. The embedding is derived from expression data, so I’d say an assignment to a cluster is generally telling you lines which are more transcriptionally similar to each other than the other lines that are not part of the cluster.
I don’t recall the specifics of which clustering method they used, and I could be mistaken about the fact the clustering being done in the lower dimensional embedding space.
Celligner is not my speciality, so I should refer you to the [celligner paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20294-x) for the most accurate information.
Thanks,
Phil
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### Author:  [@Subasree](https://forum.depmap.org/u/Subasree)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2022, 3:54am UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/significance-of-a-cluster-of-primary-and-metastatic-cell-line/1287/5 "2022-05-10T03:54:33Z")
Thank you. I will check it out