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PHLOWER leverages single-cell multimodal data to infer complex, multi-branching cell differentiation trajectories

Nature Methods, vol. 22, pp. 2328–2336

Abstract

Computational trajectory analysis is a key computational task for inferring differentiation trees from this single-cell data. An open challenge is the prediction of complex and multi-branching trees from multimodal data. To address these challenges, we present PHLOWER (decomposition of the Hodge Laplacian for inferring trajectories from flows of cell differentiation), which leverages the harmonic component of the Hodge decomposition on simplicial complexes to infer trajectory embeddings from single-cell multimodal data. These natural representations of cell differentiation facilitate the estimation of their underlying differentiation trees. We evaluate PHLOWER through benchmarking with multi-branching differentiation trees and using kidney organoid multimodal and spatial single-cell data. These demonstrate the power of PHLOWER in both the inference of complex trees and the identification of transcription factors regulating off-target cells in kidney organoids. Thus, PHLOWER enables inference of complex branching trajectories and prediction of transcriptional regulators by leveraging multimodal data.

Authors 12

  1. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Center for Computational Life Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Institute for Computational Genomics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  2. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Medicine 2 (Nephrology, Rheumatology, Clinical Immunology and Hypertension), RWTH Aachen University Medical Faculty, Aachen, Germany

    Institute for Experimental Internal Medicine and Systems Biology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  3. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Medicine 2 (Nephrology, Rheumatology, Clinical Immunology and Hypertension), RWTH Aachen University Medical Faculty, Aachen, Germany

    Institute for Experimental Internal Medicine and Systems Biology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  4. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Computer Science, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  5. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Center for Computational Life Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Institute for Computational Genomics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  6. Broad Institute · Massachusetts General Hospital · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Affiliation as printed

    Gene Regulation Observatory, The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Molecular Pathology Unit, Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

  7. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute for Experimental Internal Medicine and Systems Biology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  8. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Center for Computational Life Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Institute for Computational Genomics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  9. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute for Experimental Internal Medicine and Systems Biology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  10. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Center for Computational Life Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Department of Computer Science, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  11. Erasmus MC · RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Center for Computational Life Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany. rkramann@ukaachen.de

    Department of Internal Medicine, Nephrology and Transplantation, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. rkramann@ukaachen.de

    Department of Medicine 2 (Nephrology, Rheumatology, Clinical Immunology and Hypertension), RWTH Aachen University Medical Faculty, Aachen, Germany. rkramann@ukaachen.de

    Institute for Experimental Internal Medicine and Systems Biology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany. rkramann@ukaachen.de

  12. RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Center for Computational Life Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany. ivan.costa@rwth-aachen.de

    Institute for Computational Genomics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany. ivan.costa@rwth-aachen.de

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References 73