Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40999099›Full record

ArticleNature methods2025

EpiAgent: foundation model for single-cell epigenomics.

Xiaoyang Chen, Keyi Li, Xuejian Cui, Zian Wang, Qun Jiang, Jiacheng Lin, Zhen Li, Zijing Gao, Hairong Lv, Rui Jiang

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Article in Nature methods, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
13citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
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

13 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Single-cell epigenomics of colorectal cancer.Experimental & molecular medicine · 2026
    Review
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  5. Computational modelling of cell identity.The Biochemical journal · 2026
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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.

Xiaoyang ChenMinistry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division at the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7356-8129
Keyi LiMinistry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division at the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Xuejian CuiMinistry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division at the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0009-0007-8145-212X
Zian WangMinistry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division at the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Qun JiangMinistry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division at the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Jiacheng LinDepartment of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Zhen LiMinistry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division at the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3013-3416
Zijing GaoMinistry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division at the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0009-0005-7269-0244
Hairong LvMinistry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division at the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1568-6861
Rui JiangMinistry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division at the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. ruijiang@tsinghua.edu.cn.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7533-3753

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Although single-cell assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing (scATAC-seq) enables the exploration of the epigenomic landscape that governs transcription at the cellular level, the complicated characteristics of the sequencing data and the broad scope of downstream tasks mean that a sophisticated and versatile computational method is urgently needed. Here we introduce EpiAgent, a foundation model pretrained on our manually curated large-scale Human-scATAC-Corpus. EpiAgent encodes chromatin accessibility patterns of cells as concise 'cell sentences' and captures cellular heterogeneity behind regulatory networks via bidirectional attention. Comprehensive benchmarks show that EpiAgent excels in typical downstream tasks, including unsupervised feature extraction, supervised cell type annotation and data imputation. By incorporating external embeddings, EpiAgent enables effective cellular response prediction for both out-of-sample stimulated and unseen genetic perturbations, reference data integration and query data mapping. Through in silico knockout of cis-regulatory elements, EpiAgent demonstrates the potential to model cell state changes. EpiAgent is further extended to directly annotate cell types in a zero-shot manner.

Indexed as

EpigenomicsSingle-Cell AnalysisChromatinComputational BiologyEpigenesis, GeneticHumansSoftwareChromatin

Identifiers

PMID40999099

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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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.