DynaMiCs – Dynamic cell-type deconvolution ensembles for Mapping in mixed Conditions

Single-cell techniques facilitate the molecular analysis of individual cells, providing insights into cellular diversity, function, and the complexity of biological systems. However, their application is typically limited to small-scale studies involving individual or a few dozen samples, as a consequence of costs and experimental requirement. This complicates the inference of robust conclusions about populations. Bulk transcriptomics offers cost-efficient measurements with low experimental requirements. However, the cellular resolution is lost and only a complex linear combination of signals from multiple cells is observed. Thus, gene expression changes cannot be attributed to individual cells or cell populations.

Cell-type deconvolution methods infer cellular compositions from bulk transcriptomics data. State-of-the-art approaches use single-cell data to build molecular reference profiles and identify powerful cell-type markers for improved deconvolution. In this context, we propose Dynamic cell-type deconvolution ensembles for Mapping in mixed Conditions (DynaMiCs) for the integration of single-cell and bulk transcriptomics data. Specifically, DynaMiCs dynamically extracts information from single-cell experiments to (1) provide more accurate estimates of cellular compositions, and (2) establish a mapping between bulk and single-cell data. Consequently, DynaMiCs enables the investigation of how cell populations change in both quantity and molecular characteristics between different phenotypes, informed by single-cell experiments.