Artificial intelligence sheds new light on cell developmental dynamics

What happens inside a cell when it is activated, changing, or responding to variations in its environment? Researchers from the VIB-Ghent University Center for Inflammation Research have developed a map of how to best model these cellular dynamics. Their work not only highlights the outstanding challenges of tracking cells throughout their growth and lifetime, but also pioneers new ways of evaluating computational biology methods that aim to do this. Identifying the trajectories of individual cells. Cells are constantly changing: they divide, change, or are activated by the environment. Cells can take many alternative paths in each of these processes and they have to decide which direction to follow based on internal and external clues. Studying these cellular trajectories has recently become a lot easier thanks to advances in single-cell technologies, which allows scientists to profile individual cells at unprecedented detail. Combined with computational methods, it is possible to see the different trajectories that cells take inside a living organism and have a closer look at what goes wrong in diseases.