If we really want to know how our body’s cells work—or don’t work, in the case of disease—we might need to look beyond their genes and even beyond the proteins they are made of. We may need to start going through the cellular “trash.” The group of Dr. Yifat Merbl of the Weizmann Institute of Science developed a system to do just that, finding that “cellular dumpster-diving” contains information about the cell’s function that is not otherwise seen. The group applied their new approach to profiling the immune cells of patients with an autoimmune disorder and discovered distinct evidence for a signature pattern that offers a new thinking about the underlying causes of this disease and in the future, may lead to better diagnostic techniques.