Paper List
-
SSDLabeler: Realistic semi-synthetic data generation for multi-label artifact classification in EEG
This paper addresses the core challenge of training robust multi-label EEG artifact classifiers by overcoming the scarcity and limited diversity of ma...
-
Decoding Selective Auditory Attention to Musical Elements in Ecologically Valid Music Listening
This paper addresses the core challenge of objectively quantifying listeners' selective attention to specific musical components (e.g., vocals, drums,...
-
Physics-Guided Surrogate Modeling for Machine Learning–Driven DLD Design Optimization
This paper addresses the core bottleneck of translating microfluidic DLD devices from research prototypes to clinical applications by replacing weeks-...
-
Mechanistic Interpretability of Antibody Language Models Using SAEs
This work addresses the core challenge of achieving both interpretability and controllable generation in domain-specific protein language models, spec...
-
The Effective Reproduction Number in the Kermack-McKendrick model with age of infection and reinfection
This paper addresses the challenge of accurately estimating the time-varying effective reproduction number ℛ(t) in epidemics by incorporating two crit...
-
Fluctuating Environments Favor Extreme Dormancy Strategies and Penalize Intermediate Ones
This paper addresses the core challenge of determining how organisms should tune dormancy duration to match the temporal autocorrelation of their envi...
-
Covering Relations in the Poset of Combinatorial Neural Codes
This work addresses the core challenge of navigating the complex poset structure of neural codes to systematically test the conjecture linking convex ...
-
Revealing stimulus-dependent dynamics through statistical complexity
This paper addresses the core challenge of detecting stimulus-specific patterns in neural population dynamics that remain hidden to traditional variab...
scCluBench: Comprehensive Benchmarking of Clustering Algorithms for Single-Cell RNA Sequencing
Not specified in provided content
The 30-Second View
IN SHORT: This paper addresses the critical gap of fragmented and non-standardized benchmarking in single-cell RNA-seq clustering, which hinders objective comparison and selection of appropriate methods for specific biological contexts.
Innovation (TL;DR)
- Methodology Introduces scCluBench, the first comprehensive benchmarking framework that systematically evaluates 16 clustering methods across four categories (traditional, deep learning-based, graph-based, and foundation models) on 36 standardized datasets.
- Methodology Establishes standardized protocols for biological interpretation, including reproducible pipelines for marker gene identification and two distinct cell type annotation approaches (best-mapping and marker-overlap), validated with gold-standard references.
- Methodology Provides a unified and modular benchmarking workflow covering data preprocessing, clustering, and annotation with standardized input-output formats, ensuring reproducibility and fair comparison.
Key conclusions
- scCDCG (a cut-informed graph embedding model) achieved the highest average clustering accuracy (81.29 ± 1.45) across 36 datasets, outperforming other graph-based, deep learning, and traditional methods.
- Biological foundation models (scGPT, GeneFormer, GeneCompass) showed strong performance in classification tasks (e.g., scGPT achieved 98.14% ACC on Sapiens Ear Crista Ampullaris) but underperformed in direct clustering, highlighting a trade-off between general representation and task-specific optimization.
- The benchmark reveals method-specific limitations: traditional methods struggle with sparse data, deep learning models may fail to capture cell relationships, and graph-based models can suffer from over-smoothing, while most methods decouple embedding learning from clustering optimization.
Abstract: Cell clustering is crucial for uncovering cellular heterogeneity in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data by identifying cell types and marker genes. Despite its importance, benchmarks for scRNA-seq clustering methods remain fragmented, often lacking standardized protocols and failing to incorporate recent advances in artificial intelligence. To fill these gaps, we present scCluBench, a comprehensive benchmark of clustering algorithms for scRNA-seq data. First, scCluBench provides 36 scRNA-seq datasets collected from diverse public sources, covering multiple tissues, which are uniformly processed and standardized to ensure consistency for systematic evaluation and downstream analyses. To evaluate performance, we collect and reproduce a range of scRNA-seq clustering methods, including traditional, deep learning-based, graph-based, and biological foundation models. We comprehensively evaluate each method both quantitatively and qualitatively, using core performance metrics as well as visualization analyses. Furthermore, we construct representative downstream biological tasks, such as marker gene identification and cell type annotation, to further assess the practical utility. scCluBench then investigates the performance differences and applicability boundaries of various clustering models across diverse analytical tasks, systematically assessing their robustness and scalability in real-world scenarios. Overall, scCluBench offers a standardized and user-friendly benchmark for scRNA-seq clustering, with curated datasets, unified evaluation protocols, and transparent analyses, facilitating informed method selection and providing valuable insights into model generalizability and application scope.222All datasets, code, and the Extended version for scCluBench are available at the link: https://github.com/XPgogogo/scCluBench. More details for each stage are provided in the extended version.