The cell as a token: high-dimensional geometry in language models and cell embeddings

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Gilpin, William
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Gilpin, William
author_facet Gilpin, William
contents Single-cell sequencing technology maps cells to a high-dimensional space encoding their internal activity. Recently-proposed virtual cell models extend this concept, enriching cells' representations based on patterns learned from pretraining on vast cell atlases. This review explores how advances in understanding the structure of natural language embeddings informs ongoing efforts to analyze single-cell datasets. Both fields process unstructured data by partitioning datasets into tokens embedded within a high-dimensional vector space. We discuss how the context of tokens influences the geometry of embedding space, and how low-dimensional manifolds shape this space's robustness and interpretation. We highlight how new developments in foundation models for language, such as interpretability probes and in-context reasoning, can inform efforts to construct cell atlases and train virtual cell models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_20278
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The cell as a token: high-dimensional geometry in language models and cell embeddings
Gilpin, William
Quantitative Methods
Machine Learning
Single-cell sequencing technology maps cells to a high-dimensional space encoding their internal activity. Recently-proposed virtual cell models extend this concept, enriching cells' representations based on patterns learned from pretraining on vast cell atlases. This review explores how advances in understanding the structure of natural language embeddings informs ongoing efforts to analyze single-cell datasets. Both fields process unstructured data by partitioning datasets into tokens embedded within a high-dimensional vector space. We discuss how the context of tokens influences the geometry of embedding space, and how low-dimensional manifolds shape this space's robustness and interpretation. We highlight how new developments in foundation models for language, such as interpretability probes and in-context reasoning, can inform efforts to construct cell atlases and train virtual cell models.
title The cell as a token: high-dimensional geometry in language models and cell embeddings
topic Quantitative Methods
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20278