Deciphering the Genetic Architecture of Sorghum Grain Oil Content via Lipidome-Integrated Genome-Wide Association Analysis

This study integrates population-scale lipidomics with genome-wide association analysis in 266 sorghum accessions to elucidate the complex genetic architecture of grain oil, identifying 55 key loci and 27 elite accessions that reveal coordinated regulation between lipid metabolism and specialized pathways for targeted crop improvement.

Jiao, Y., Nigam, D., Metwally, S. + 1 more2026-03-16💻 bioinformatics

Integrative modeling of read depth and B-allele frequency improves single-cell copy number calling from targeted DNA sequencing panels

This paper introduces scPloidyR, a hidden Markov model that jointly analyzes sequencing read depth and B-allele frequency from targeted single-cell DNA panels to significantly improve the accuracy of copy number variation detection compared to depth-only methods, provided that allelic information is available.

Pei, D., Griffard-Smith, R., Cano Urrego, B. + 1 more2026-03-16💻 bioinformatics

Chemically informed representations of amino acids enable learning beyond the canonical protein alphabet

This paper introduces a chemically informed peptide representation based on 2D molecular structures and convolutional autoencoders that enables machine learning models to generalize beyond the canonical amino acid alphabet to unseen post-translational modifications while providing chemically interpretable insights.

Christiansen, J. C., Gonzalez-Valdes Tejero, M., Hembo, C. S. + 2 more2026-03-16💻 bioinformatics

UniST: A Unified Computational Framework for 3D Spatial Transcriptomics Reconstruction

UniST is a unified generative AI framework that integrates point cloud upsampling, optical flow interpolation, and graph autoencoders to computationally reconstruct dense, continuous, and biologically meaningful 3D spatial transcriptomics landscapes from sparse and heterogeneous 2D serial sections without requiring changes to experimental protocols.

Shui, L., Liu, Y., Julio, I. C. L. + 21 more2026-03-16💻 bioinformatics

Reinforcement Learning for Antibiotic Stewardship: Optimizing Prescribing Policies Under Antimicrobial Resistance Dynamics

This paper introduces a simulation framework demonstrating that hierarchical reinforcement learning effectively optimizes antibiotic prescribing policies under antimicrobial resistance dynamics by leveraging temporal abstraction and risk stratification to outperform fixed rules and flat RL approaches in complex, partially observable environments.

Lee, J., Blumberg, S.2026-03-16💻 bioinformatics

Strigolactone signaling regulates corm development through SPL15-mediated hormonal crosstalk in banana

This study demonstrates that exogenous strigolactone treatment inhibits corm development in *Pisang Awak* banana by dynamically regulating the expression of genes involved in multiple hormonal pathways, with the SPL15 gene identified as a key mediator integrating strigolactone signaling with auxin, cytokinin, abscisic acid, brassinosteroids, gibberellins, and jasmonic acid pathways.

Long, F., Zhao, M., Wu, P. + 4 more2026-03-16💻 bioinformatics

Personalized Morphology, Replication Timing, and RNA based Gene Expression Networks for Basal-like and Classical subtyping genes in Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

This study pioneers the integration of replication-timing proxies derived from methylation data and morphological embeddings into personalized LIONESS gene networks, demonstrating that these epigenetic and structural features significantly enhance the robustness and classification accuracy of basal-like versus classical subtypes in pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

Leyva, A., Niazi, M. K. K.2026-03-16💻 bioinformatics

Decoding conformational heterogeneity across disordered proteomes

The paper introduces AI-IDP, a deep-learning framework that accurately predicts conformational ensembles for intrinsically disordered proteins by integrating sequence data with physical principles, revealing that transient secondary structures are evolutionarily tuned features and providing a practical tool to understand the structural and functional logic of disordered proteomes in health and disease.

Abyzov, A., Zweckstetter, M.2026-03-16💻 bioinformatics

PepCABO: Latent-space Bayesian optimization for peptide-MHC binding using contrastive alignment

PepCABO is a novel latent-space Bayesian optimization framework that leverages a dual variational autoencoder with contrastive alignment to efficiently discover high-affinity peptide-MHC binders by enabling structured knowledge transfer across alleles and improving sample efficiency in both low- and high-budget experimental settings.

Ghane, M., Korpela, D., Dumitrescu, A. + 1 more2026-03-16💻 bioinformatics