E-Mail Irvine, Calif., Jan. 5, 2021 -- Scientists at the University of California, Irvine have developed a new deep-learning framework that predicts gene regulation at the single-cell level. Deep learning, a family of machine-learning methods based on artificial neural networks, has revolutionized applications such as image interpretation, natural language processing and autonomous driving. In a study published recently in Science Advances, UCI researchers describe how the technique can also be successfully used to observe gene regulation at the cellular level. Until now, that process had been limited to tissue-level analysis. According to co-senior author Xiaohui Xie, UCI professor of computer science, the framework enables the study of transcription factor binding at the cellular level, which was previously impossible due to the intrinsic noise and sparsity of single-cell data. A transcription factor is a protein that controls the translation of genetic information from DNA to RNA; TFs regulate genes to ensure they're expressed in proper sequence and at the right time in cells.