ELISA: An Interpretable Hybrid Generative AI Agent for Expression-Grounded Discovery in Single-Cell Genomics

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.11872v2
• Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:08:47 GMT
• Title: ELISA: An Interpretable Hybrid Generative AI Agent for Expression-Grounded Discovery in Single-Cell Genomics
• Abstract summary: We introduce (Embedding-Linked Interactive Single-cell Agent) an interpretable framework that unifies scGPT expression embeddings with BioBERT-based semantic retrieval.<n> Benchmarked across six diverse scRNA-seq datasets spanning inflammatory lung disease, pediatric and adult cancers, organoid models, healthy tissue, and neurodevelopment.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Translating single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data into mechanistic biological hypotheses remains a critical bottleneck, as agentic AI systems lack direct access to transcriptomic representations while expression foundation models remain opaque to natural language. Here we introduce ELISA (Embedding-Linked Interactive Single-cell Agent), an interpretable framework that unifies scGPT expression embeddings with BioBERT-based semantic retrieval and LLM-mediated interpretation for interactive single-cell discovery. An automatic query classifier routes inputs to gene marker scoring, semantic matching, or reciprocal rank fusion pipelines depending on whether the query is a gene signature, natural language concept, or mixture of both. Integrated analytical modules perform pathway activity scoringacross 60+ gene sets, ligand--receptor interaction prediction using 280+ curated pairs, condition-aware comparative analysis, and cell-type proportion estimation all operating directly on embedded data without access to the original count matrix. Benchmarked across six diverse scRNA-seq datasets spanning inflammatory lung disease, pediatric and adult cancers, organoid models, healthy tissue, and neurodevelopment, ELISA significantly outperforms CellWhisperer in cell type retrieval (combined permutation test, $p < 0.001$), with particularly large gains on gene-signature queries (Cohen's $d = 5.98$ for MRR). ELISA replicates published biological findings (mean composite score 0.90) with near-perfect pathway alignment and theme coverage (0.98 each), and generates candidate hypotheses through grounded LLM reasoning, bridging the gap between transcriptomic data exploration and biological discovery. Code available at: https://github.com/omaruno/ELISA-An-AI-Agent-for-Expression-Grounded-Discovery-in-Single-Cell-Genomi cs.git (If you use ELISA in your research, please cite this work).

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