Control-Anchored Residual Flow Matching Conditioned on Gene Geometry for Virtual Cell Perturbation Modeling
On the map: Diffusion models → Flow matching, time series and science
Abstract (arXiv)
A central task in virtual cell modeling is predicting single-cell transcriptional responses to unseen genetic perturbations and drug combinations, and biological networks provide valuable priors on gene relationships. Existing graph-based models commonly use the same network to structure gene representations and mediate intergene interactions, thereby implicitly treating stable associations as perturbation-response pathways. Gene Ontology and control-derived coexpression networks encode relatively stable relationships rather than intervention-specific response directions or magnitudes. We therefore propose GeneGeoFlow, which conditions a control-anchored residual flow on gene-wise geometry derived from biological networks to learn intervention-specific transcriptional responses. GeneGeoFlow derives multi-scale spectral coordinates from Gene Ontology and control-derived coexpression networks. A perturbation-conditioned, gene-wise gating module selects relevant structural scales and network sources, yielding intervention-specific gene geometry. The resulting geometry conditions a control-anchored residual flow without explicitly propagating target-derived signals along the graph. Condition-wise optimal transport couples unpaired control and perturbed populations for training, while a Delta-correlation objective aligns the predicted and observed condition-level expression-shift directions. GeneGeoFlow achieves Pearson Delta scores of 0.8979 on the Norman additive benchmark and 0.9088 on five held-out drug combinations in the fixed ComboSciPlex test split. These results support perturbation-conditioned gene geometry as an effective structural prior for intervention-specific response prediction, without conflating stable gene relationships with response propagation.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 6 of its 21 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Aug 2026.
Builds on
6 of 21 references.
Closest ancestors · 1
Same direction, newest first
Other references · 5
- 2026PerturbDiff: Functional Diffusion for Single-Cell Perturbation Modelingcited by 8
- 2026What Makes a Representation Good for Single-Cell Perturbation Prediction?cited by 4
- 2025Departures: Distributional Transport for Single-Cell Perturbation Prediction with Neural Schr"odinger Bridgescited by 3
- 2026Beyond Independent Genes: Learning Module-Inductive Representations for Single-Cell Gene Perturbation Predictioncited by 2
- 2026Learning Adaptive Perturbation-Conditioned Contexts for Robust Transcriptional Response Predictioncited by 1
Built on by
Not cited yet.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026VCLMU: Mechanism-Centric Virtual Cell World Modeling for Perturbation Response
- 2026D2R2: Discrete Diffusion with Regulation Reinforcement for Single-Cell Perturbation Prediction
- 2026What Topological and Geometric Structure Do Biological Foundation Models Learn? Evidence from 141 Hypotheses
- 2026CoDiffGRN: Rethinking Gene Regulatory Network Inference via the BEELINE-KGC Benchmark and Co-evolutionary Discrete Diffusion
- 2026Generalizable single-cell perturbation response prediction using energy-guided flow matching
- 2026DRIFT: Disentangled Responsive-Invariant Flow Transport for Single-Cell Perturbation Prediction
- 2026OCOO-T : A Simple and Scalable Virtual Cell Model for Transcriptional Perturbation Response Prediction
- 2026Exhaustive Circuit Mapping of a Single-Cell Foundation Model Reveals Massive Redundancy, Heavy-Tailed Hub Architecture, and Layer-Dependent Differentiation Control