Uncovering cell identity through differential stability with Cepo

The use of single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) allows observation of different cells at multi-tiered complexity in the same microenvironment. To get insights into cell identity using scRNA-seq data, we present Cepo, which generates cell-type-specific gene statistics of differentially stable genes from scRNA-seq data to define cell identity. When applied to multiple datasets, Cepo outperforms current methods in assigning cell identity and enhances several cell identification applications such as cell-type characterisation, spatial mapping of single cells and lineage inference of single cells. Defining cell identity is a fundamental task in dissecting the cellular heterogeneity in single-cell data. Here the authors developed Cepo, a method to uncover cell identity genes and enhance the retrieval of cellular identities from scRNA-seq data.