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Robust Integration of Sparse Single-Cell Alternative Splicing and Gene Expression Data with SpliceVI

Vaidyanathan, S.; Isaev, K.; Zweig, A.; Knowles, D. A.

2025-12-01 systems biology
10.1101/2025.11.26.690853 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Alternative splicing (AS) and gene expression (GE) are tightly related regulatory processes, critical for defining cell types and states, yet are rarely modeled together in single-cell analyses. This hinders a comprehensive understanding of cellular identity. We address this by introducing SpliceVI, adapted from MultiVI (Multi-modal Variational Inference) to specifically handle AS. Applied to a large multisample mouse Smart-seq2 dataset (n = 142, 315 cells/nuclei), SpliceVI jointly learns from both AS and GE using a partial variational autoencoder that effectively handles the sparsity and missingness of splicing data. We show that SpliceVIs joint embeddings are more expressive and informative of biological correlates like age than a GE-only approach (scVI). SpliceVI also uncovers splicingbased differences between neuronal subclusters. This approach reveals the distinct yet synergistic relationship between AS and GE in shaping cellular diversity in mouse.

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