CellChat

In the realm of transcriptional dynamics, understanding the intricate interplay of regulatory proteins is crucial for deciphering processes ranging from normal development to disease progression. However, traditional RNA velocity methods often overlook the underlying regulatory drivers of gene expression changes over time. This gap in knowledge hinders our ability to unravel the mechanistic intricacies of these dynamic processes. scKINETICs (Key regulatory Interaction NETwork for Inferring Cell Speed) (Burdziak et al, 2023) offers a dynamic model for gene expression changes that simultaneously learns per-cell transcriptional velocities and a governing gene regulatory network. By employing an expectation-maximization approach, scKINETICS quantifies the impact of each regulatory element on its target genes, incorporating insights from epigenetic data, gene-gene coexpression patterns and constraints dictated by the phenotypic manifold.

Doublets are a characteristic error source in droplet-based single-cell sequencing data where two cells are encapsulated in the same oil emulsion and are tagged with the same cell barcode. Across type doublets manifest as fictitious phenotypes that can be incorrectly interpreted as novel cell types. DoubletDetection present a novel, fast, unsupervised classifier to detect across-type doublets in single-cell RNA-sequencing data that operates on a count matrix and imposes no experimental constraints. This classifier leverages the creation of in silico synthetic doublets to determine which cells in the input count matrix have gene expression that is best explained by the combination of distinct cell types in the matrix. In this notebook, we will illustrate an example workflow for detecting doublets in single-cell RNA-seq count matrices.

Understanding global communications among cells requires accurate representation of cell-cell signaling links and effective systems-level analyses of those links. We construct a database of interactions among ligands, receptors and their cofactors that accurately represent known heteromeric molecular complexes. We then develop **CellChat**, a tool that is able to quantitatively infer and analyze intercellular communication networks from single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. CellChat predicts major signaling inputs and outputs for cells and how those cells and signals coordinate for functions using network analysis and pattern recognition approaches. Through manifold learning and quantitative contrasts, CellChat classifies signaling pathways and delineates conserved and context-specific pathways across different datasets. Applying **CellChat** to mouse and human skin datasets shows its ability to extract complex signaling patterns.

Spatial transcriptomic studies are becoming increasingly common and large, posing important statistical and computational challenges for many analytic tasks. Here, we present SPARK-X, a non-parametric method for rapid and effective detection of spatially expressed genes in large spatial transcriptomic studies. SPARK-X not only produces effective type I error control and high power but also brings orders of magnitude computational savings. We apply SPARK-X to analyze three large datasets, one of which is only analyzable by SPARK-X. In these data, SPARK-X identifies many spatially expressed genes including those that are spatially expressed within the same cell type, revealing new biological insights.