DeepMind unveils AlphaGenome 2, predicting the effects of DNA variants by cell type to narrow down candidate disease causes(wowtale.net)

- This AI model predicts how gene activity changes inside a specific cell, such as a heart muscle cell or an immune cell, when a single DNA letter changes. Earlier models stayed at the level of tissue averages. - According to DeepMind, it finds nearly twice as many variants that alter gene expression within cells as the previous best model. In the dataset TenK10K of 28 immune cell types, the hit rate for causal variants was 30%, higher than 16% for existing tools, the company said. - The model takes the cell type or state as a condition together with the DNA sequence. DeepMind explained that by uploading only single-cell RNA data from a few dozen cells, it can be applied to new cell states without retraining. - For non-commercial research, it can be used right away through the AlphaGenome API, and for commercial research it is offered as a private preview. The paper and the API are public.