Tools & Strategies News

Researchers Develop ML Tool for Studying Characteristics of Single Cells

Researchers have developed new machine-learning software that may help pinpoint the exact causes of genetic-based diseases by enabling analyses of single-cell characteristics.

Various medical and AI tools drawn on a light blue background

Source: Getty Images

By Shania Kennedy

- Researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) developed new machine-learning (ML) software to analyze multiple characteristics of a single cell, which may lead to insights into the causes of genetic disease.

The press release states that the tool enables researchers to perform single-cell sequencing, which helps them see how one change in a cell can lead to several others and how specific aspects of a cell impact its interaction within its microenvironment. Using single-cell sequencing, researchers can study gene expression, messenger RNA, proteins, and organelles within the cells in much greater detail than previously possible.

This type of sequencing is particularly relevant for cancer research because it can be leveraged to evaluate the effects of a mutation that may only affect a small number of cells, the press release notes. However, challenges can arise when studying a single cell’s characteristics. Because each characteristic is studied individually, its connections with other characteristics, like how a genetic variant may impact messenger RNA, may not be clear, even when comparing data from the same cell.