Inference of high-resolution trajectories in single-cell RNA-seq data by using RNA velocity

Abstract

Trajectory inference (TI) methods infer cell developmental trajectory from single-cell RNA sequencing data. Current TI methods can be categorized into those using RNA velocity information and those using only single-cell gene expression data. The latter type of methods are restricted to certain trajectory structures, and cannot determine cell developmental direction. Recently proposed TI methods using RNA velocity information have limited accuracy. We present CellPath, a method that infers cell trajectories by integrating single-cell gene expression and RNA velocity information. CellPath overcomes the restrictions of TI methods that do not use RNA velocity information: it can find multiple high-resolution trajectories without constraints on the trajectory structure, and can automatically detect the direction of each trajectory path. We evaluate CellPath on both real and simulated datasets and show that CellPath finds more accurate and detailed trajectories than the state-of-the-art TI methods using or not using RNA velocity information.