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Record W4407436635 · doi:10.1038/s42003-025-07692-x

scCobra allows contrastive cell embedding learning with domain adaptation for single cell data integration and harmonization

2025· article· en· W4407436635 on OpenAlexafffund
Bowen Zhao, Kailu Song, Dong‐Qing Wei, Yi Xiong, Jun Ding

Bibliographic record

VenueCommunications Biology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicSingle-cell and spatial transcriptomics
Canadian institutionsMcGill UniversityMila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence InstituteChristie (Canada)McGill University Health Centre
FundersFonds de Recherche du Québec - SantéCanadian Institutes of Health ResearchNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaNational Natural Science Foundation of ChinaGovernment of CanadaNational Science Foundation
KeywordsComputer scienceData integrationAdaptation (eye)ScalabilityDomain (mathematical analysis)Domain adaptationEmbeddingComparabilityArtificial intelligenceData miningMachine learningDatabase

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The rapid advancement of single-cell technologies has created an urgent need for effective methods to integrate and harmonize single-cell data. Technical and biological variations across studies complicate data integration, while conventional tools often struggle with reliance on gene expression distribution assumptions and over-correction. Here, we present scCobra, a deep generative neural network designed to overcome these challenges through contrastive learning with domain adaptation. scCobra effectively mitigates batch effects, minimizes over-correction, and ensures biologically meaningful data integration without assuming specific gene expression distributions. It enables online label transfer across datasets with batch effects, allowing continuous integration of new data without retraining. Additionally, scCobra supports batch effect simulation, advanced multi-omic integration, and scalable processing of large datasets. By integrating and harmonizing datasets from similar studies, scCobra expands the available data for investigating specific biological problems, improving cross-study comparability, and revealing insights that may be obscured in isolated datasets.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.005
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: Simulation or modeling
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Teacher disagreement score0.003
Threshold uncertainty score0.012

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.005
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0020.003
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.042
GPT teacher head0.293
Teacher spread0.251 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSimulation or modeling
Domainnot available
GenreMethods

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations10
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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