Nature Reviews Genetics (2019) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-019-0130-6 Published online 21 May 2019

In the reference list of the originally published article, the reference annotation “This study used an scRNA-seq and matched smFISH approach to model the variability versus mean expression relationship while accounting for technical noise” should have been associated with reference 56 (Grün, Kester & van Oudenaarden, Nat. Methods (2014)) rather than with reference 57. The article has now been corrected online.