Davide CIttaro
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daweonline.bsky.social
Davide CIttaro
@daweonline.bsky.social
Coordinator of λ-lab @ Center for Omics Sciences, Milan | Assistant professor of bioinformatics @unisr.bsky.social
I feel like I’m on sabbatical without being on sabbatical
November 20, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Can you believe I haven’t read this in 6 years? I made amends, one less on the (still long) reading list

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Gene expression across mammalian organ development - Nature
The transcriptomes of seven major organs across developmental stages from several mammalian species are used for comparative analyses of gene expression and evolution across organ development.
www.nature.com
November 13, 2025 at 6:19 AM
Great job. The most interesting part? The initial design that leverages good quality data (L1000), not single cell data. Also an apparently simpler AI architecture.
🚀 Our new Science paper is out (w/ B DeMeo, D Burkhardt, A Shalek, M Cortes): www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
We show that active learning + transcriptomic perturbations can guide which exps to run next, boosting phenotypic hit rates >13x. AI not just predicting bio, but designing it. 🔁
October 27, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[PHLOWER] leverages the harmonic component of the Hodge decomposition on simplicial complexes to infer trajectory embeddings from single-cell multimodal data.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
PHLOWER leverages single-cell multimodal data to infer complex, multi-branching cell differentiation trajectories - Nature Methods
PHLOWER leverages single-cell multimodal data to infer complex, multi-branching cell differentiation trajectories.
www.nature.com
October 24, 2025 at 9:39 AM
Random album discovered this morning

music.apple.com/it/album/the...
the three mice di 鼠鼠鼠 su Apple Music
Album · 2024 · 7 brani
music.apple.com
October 21, 2025 at 6:48 AM
How much current foundation models for scRNA are bound to the technology used to produce data (10x or Parse)? How much to the processing pipeline?
October 17, 2025 at 6:44 AM
Dear reviewer 2, could you please try to be more specific on your points? Saying “something is not enough” isn’t actually enough.
Sincerely,

Reviewer 1
October 16, 2025 at 4:22 PM
I opened X after a while and the first thing I found was recent news about C2S, my feed here is apparently lagging on this.
It’s anecdotal, but how many news/updates/discussions am I missing?

blog.google/technology/a...
How a Gemma model helped discover a new potential cancer therapy pathway
We’re launching a new 27 billion parameter foundation model for single-cell analysis built on the Gemma family of open models.
blog.google
October 16, 2025 at 3:07 AM
Reposted by Davide CIttaro
Big, beautiful trees!!

SMART-PTA for whole-genome+transcriptome on thousand of single cells from the normal human esophagus 🤯 Massively scaling up the power of scWGS to build deep phylogenies and chart somatic evolution from birth throughout life.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 14, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Davide CIttaro
And it's posted! If you're interested and eligible, please consider applying through the UMD portal: umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j....

If you're a PI working in algorithmic genomics (& you can recommend my lab to your top graduating students ;P), please let them know!
October 8, 2025 at 4:53 PM
We had a strong enrichment in shorter sequences when testing AVITI, is this something other have noticed?

Problem is that in a combinatorial barcoding experiment we basically sequenced empty artifacts (same library on illumina was legit)
October 1, 2025 at 6:23 AM
From the lab next to ours, cool device for HT organoid culture, testing and screening.
3D printing and bioprinting for miniaturized and scalable hanging-drop organoids culture
Three-dimensional (3D) cell culture systems rely on the manipulation of a biologically derived matrix, typically soluble Basement Membrane Extract (sBME), in which cells or cellular aggregates, such a...
www.biorxiv.org
September 30, 2025 at 3:50 PM
I can’t tell if it’s more interesting the approach and results (good predictions+ensembles) or the fact it’s efficient and requires less energy to run. Or both.
September 27, 2025 at 4:26 PM
I knew it was only a matter of time before KAN made into single cell!
scKAN: interpretable single-cell analysis for cell-type-specific gene discovery and drug repurposing via Kolmogorov-Arnold networks - Genome Biology
Background Analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data has revolutionized our understanding of cellular heterogeneity, yet current approaches face challenges in efficiency, interpretability, and connecting molecular insights to therapeutic applications. Despite advances in deep learning methods, identifying cell-type-specific functional gene sets remains difficult. Results In this study, we present scKAN, an interpretable framework for scRNA-seq analysis with two primary goals: accurate cell-type annotation and the discovery of cell-type-specific marker genes and gene sets. The key innovation is using the learnable activation curves of the Kolmogorov-Arnold network to model gene-to-cell relationships. This approach provides a more direct way to visualize and interpret these specific interactions compared to the aggregated weighting schemes typical of attention mechanisms. This architecture achieves superior performance in cell-type annotation, with a 6.63% improvement in macro F1 score over state-of-the-art methods. Additionally, it enables the systematic identification of functionally coherent cell-type-specific gene sets. We demonstrate the framework’s translational potential through a case study on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, where gene signatures identified by scKAN led to a potential drug repurposing candidate, whose binding stability was supported by molecular dynamics simulations. Conclusions Our work establishes scKAN as an efficient and interpretable framework that effectively bridges single-cell analysis with drug discovery. By combining lightweight architecture with the ability to uncover nuanced biological patterns, our approach offers an interpretable method for translating large-scale single-cell data into actionable therapeutic strategies. This approach provides a robust foundation for accelerating the identification of cell-type-specific targets in complex diseases.
genomebiology.biomedcentral.com
September 26, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Among other things, scATAC suffers the inefficient tagmentation process. I can’t agree more, we have some sc data at high coverage and it seems that the number of events per cell is by far lower than expected
A hierarchical, count-based model highlights challenges in scATAC-seq data analysis and points to opportunities to extract finer-resolution information - Genome Biology
Background Data from Single-cell Assay for Transposase Accessible Chromatin with Sequencing (scATAC-seq) is highly sparse. While current computational methods feature a range of transformation procedures to extract meaningful information, major challenges remain. Results Here, we discuss the major scATAC-seq data analysis challenges such as sequencing depth normalization and region-specific biases. We present a hierarchical count model that is motivated by the data generating process of scATAC-seq data. Our simulations show that current scATAC-seq data, while clearly containing physical single-cell resolution, are too sparse to infer true informational-level single-cell, single-region of chromatin accessibility states. Conclusions While the broad utility of scATAC-seq at a cell type level is undeniable, describing it as fully resolving chromatin accessibility at single-cell resolution, particularly at individual locus level, may overstate the level of detail currently achievable. We conclude that chromatin accessibility profiling at true single-cell, single-region resolution is challenging with current data sensitivity, but that it may be achieved with promising developments in optimizing the efficiency of scATAC-seq assays.
genomebiology.biomedcentral.com
September 24, 2025 at 8:48 AM
A wonderful UMAP!
September 3, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Davide CIttaro
How do Probabilistic Graphical Models and Graph Neural Networks Look at Network Data? arxiv.org/abs/2506.11869
How do Probabilistic Graphical Models and Graph Neural Networks Look at Network Data?
Graphs are a powerful data structure for representing relational data and are widely used to describe complex real-world systems. Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs) and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs)...
arxiv.org
August 27, 2025 at 12:04 PM
I am listening to Valérie on the latest OMG Genomics podcast episode (omgenomics.com/podcast) about the quality and importance of annotation. Basically SNAFU, I hope we will improve the situation, also valuing the curators and their work.
August 13, 2025 at 7:14 AM
Slightly diminish a band:

U1
Slightly diminish a band:

Nine centimeter nails
Slightly diminish a band:

Jane’s Occasional indulgence
August 13, 2025 at 3:28 AM
When I first started working in omics I used to joke about the fact you can likely find a link between any gene and any mechanism. I’ve tested Biomni co-pilot today with random SNP/phenotype, it’s amazing what it can do and how it masters our joke.
I can’t say if it’s a bad or a good thing
August 8, 2025 at 3:39 PM