Academic Journal
Gene-Chronos: parameter-efficient developmental time inference using a pretrained single-cell foundation model.
| Τίτλος: | Gene-Chronos: parameter-efficient developmental time inference using a pretrained single-cell foundation model. |
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| Συγγραφείς: | Liu Y; School of Computer Science, Wuhan University, No. 299 Bayi Road, Wuchang District, Wuhan 430072, Hubei, China.; School of Artificial Intelligence, Wuhan University, No. 299 Bayi Road, Wuchang District, Wuhan 430072, Hubei, China., Gao H; School of Mathematics and Statistics, Wuhan University, No. 299 Bayi Road, Wuchang District, Wuhan 430072, Hubei, China., Tian T; School of Computer Science, Wuhan University, No. 299 Bayi Road, Wuchang District, Wuhan 430072, Hubei, China.; School of Artificial Intelligence, Wuhan University, No. 299 Bayi Road, Wuchang District, Wuhan 430072, Hubei, China. |
| Πηγή: | Briefings in bioinformatics [Brief Bioinform] 2026 Sep 01; Vol. 27 (5). |
| Τύπος έκδοσης: | Journal Article |
| Γλώσσα: | English |
| Στοιχεία περιοδικού: | Publisher: Oxford University Press Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 100912837 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1477-4054 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 14675463 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Brief Bioinform Subsets: MEDLINE |
| Imprint Name(s): | Publication: Oxford : Oxford University Press Original Publication: London ; Birmingham, AL : H. Stewart Publications, [2000- |
| Ιατρικοί όροι (MeSH): | Single-Cell Analysis*/methods , Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental* , Transcriptome*, Animals ; Single-Cell Gene Expression Analysis ; Gene Expression Profiling ; Spatial Transcriptomics ; Humans |
| Περίληψη: | Large-scale single-cell and spatial transcriptomic atlases enable the study of developmental processes at high resolution. However, most datasets capture only static snapshots of cells, making it difficult to infer continuous biological time from transcriptomic profiles. Existing temporal inference methods often show limited robustness across heterogeneous datasets, and recent single-cell foundation models, although powerful for representation learning, are not designed to capture continuous temporal relationships. We present Gene-Chronos, a parameter-efficient framework for developmental time inference built on a frozen pretrained Geneformer backbone. The model introduces learnable temporal prompt tokens and a temporal contrastive objective to extract time-informative signals and encourage temporally coherent organization of cell representations. Across multiple benchmark datasets spanning diverse species and developmental stages, Gene-Chronos outperforms existing approaches and demonstrates strong generalization to previously unseen samples. Attention-based analyses further identify genes associated with developmental progression, providing interpretable insights into temporal gene expression dynamics. (© The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press.) |
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| Grant Information: | 2042025kf0038 Lei Jun Foundation Limited and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities |
| Contributed Indexing: | Keywords: developmental time inference; single-cell transcriptomics; spatial transcriptomics; transfer generalization |
| Entry Date(s): | Date Created: 20260904 Date Completed: 20260904 Latest Revision: 20260907 |
| Update Code: | 20260907 |
| PubMed Central ID: | PMC13544629 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/bib/bbag469 |
| PMID: | 42696754 |
| Βάση Δεδομένων: | MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1477-4054 |
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| DOI: | 10.1093/bib/bbag469 |