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Arc Institute’s first virtual cell model: <span style="font-variant: small-caps">S<span style="font-weight: bolder">tate</span></span> | Arc Institute

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The human body is a mosaic of cells. Immune cells ramp up inflammation to fight infections; stem cells differentiate into diverse tissues; cancer cells evade regulatory signals to divide uncontrollably. Despite their remarkable differences, however, each human cell carries (nearly) the same genome. A cell’s distinctiveness arises not just from differing DNA, but rather in how each cell uses that DNA. In other words, a cell’s properties emerge from variations in gene expression, or the switching of genes “on” and “off” across time. A cell’s gene expression patterns—expressed in terms of RNA molecules, which are themselves transcribed from the genome—determine not only its cell type but also its cellular state: changes in a cell’s gene expression can reveal how it moves from healthy to inflamed to cancerous. By measuring the RNA transcripts within cells with or without a chemical or genetic perturbation, it is possible to train AI models capable of predicting how a cell’s gene expression

Niko McCarty June 23, 2025 Arc Institute’s first virtual cell model: S tate The human body is a mosaic of cells. Immune cells ramp up inflammation to fight infections; stem cells differentiate into diverse tissues; cancer cells evade regulatory signals to divide uncontrollably. Despite their remarkable differences, however, each human cell carries (nearly) the same genome. A cell’s distinctiveness arises not just from differing DNA, but rather in how each cell uses that DNA. In other words, a cell’s properties emerge from variations in gene expression, or the switching of genes “on” and “off”

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