Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32978299›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020

Deep learning of immune cell differentiation.

Alexandra Maslova, Ricardo N Ramirez, Ke Ma, Hugo Schmutz, Chendi Wang, Curtis Fox, Bernard Ng, Christophe Benoist, Sara Mostafavi, Immunological Genome Project

Open access · bronzeAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 68 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
68citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
6.8field-weighted citation impact, top 2% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

68 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 121 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
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  15. Refining sequence-to-activity models by increasing model resolution.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025
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  18. Recipes and ingredients for deep learning models of 3D genome folding.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2025
    Review
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  20. Article

8 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

10 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.

Alexandra MaslovaDepartment of Statistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
Ricardo N RamirezDepartment of Immunology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115.ORCID 0000-0002-1259-5406
Ke MaDepartment of Computer Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
Hugo SchmutzDepartment of Immunology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115.
Chendi WangDepartment of Statistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.ORCID 0000-0002-0686-4024
Curtis FoxDepartment of Computer Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
Bernard NgDepartment of Statistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.ORCID 0000-0002-8688-3873
Christophe BenoistDepartment of Immunology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115; cb@hms.harvard.edu saram@stat.ubc.ca.
Sara MostafaviDepartment of Statistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada; cb@hms.harvard.edu saram@stat.ubc.ca.
Immunological Genome Project
University of British Columbia · CAHarvard University · USCanadian Institute for Advanced Research · CA

Funding

ImmGen: Gene Expression and Regulation in Immune CellsR24AI072073 · NIAID · JOSLIN DIABETES CENTER · PI CHRISTOPHE O. BENOIST · 2007 to 2026
$28.5M
Specification of Treg cells: FOXP3 functional facetsR01AI116834 · NIAID · HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL · PI BENOIST, CHRISTOPHE O. · 2015 to 2019
$2.3M
NIAID NIH HHS R01 AI116834NIAID NIH HHS R24 AI072073
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Although we know many sequence-specific transcription factors (TFs), how the DNA sequence of cis-regulatory elements is decoded and orchestrated on the genome scale to determine immune cell differentiation is beyond our grasp. Leveraging a granular atlas of chromatin accessibility across 81 immune cell types, we asked if a convolutional neural network (CNN) could learn to infer cell type-specific chromatin accessibility solely from regulatory DNA sequences. With a tailored architecture and an ensemble approach to CNN parameter interpretation, we show that our trained network ("AI-TAC") does so by rediscovering ab initio the binding motifs for known regulators and some unknown ones. Motifs whose importance is learned virtually as functionally important overlap strikingly well with positions determined by chromatin immunoprecipitation for several TFs. AI-TAC establishes a hierarchy of TFs and their interactions that drives lineage specification and also identifies stage-specific interactions, like Pax5/Ebf1 vs. Pax5/Prdm1, or the role of different NF-κB dimers in different cell types. AI-TAC assigns Spi1/Cebp and Pax5/Ebf1 as the drivers necessary for myeloid and B lineage fates, respectively, but no factors seemed as dominantly required for T cell differentiation, which may represent a fall-back pathway. Mouse-trained AI-TAC can parse human DNA, revealing a strikingly similar ranking of influential TFs and providing additional support that AI-TAC is a generalizable regulatory sequence decoder. Thus, deep learning can reveal the regulatory syntax predictive of the full differentiative complexity of the immune system.

Indexed as

Deep LearningTranscription FactorsAnimalsChromatinDatabases, GeneticGene Expression RegulationHematopoiesisHumansMiceRegulatory Sequences, Nucleic AcidChromatinTranscription Factorsartificial intelligencegene regulation

Identifiers

PMID32978299
PMCPMC7568267
OpenAlexW3088687225

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.