Pycea: a scverse toolkit for single-cell lineage tracing analysis

Lineage tracing enables reconstruction of cellular histories in development, regeneration, and disease, but integrating lineage data into single-cell analysis workflows remains challenging. We introduce Pycea, a Python toolkit for lineage analysis and visualization, and TreeData, an extension of AnnData that stores lineage trees alongside cellular measurements. TreeData is compatible with Scanpy and other scverse tools, enabling integrated analysis without converting between formats. Pycea provides scalable methods for tree visualization, clade identification, distance comparisons, ancestral state inference, and lineage statistics. This software is open source and available at https://github.com/YosefLab/pycea.

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Publication Details

Journal
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Published
2026-11-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.10.30.763227
Primary Topic
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
Type
preprint

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preprint

Pycea: a scverse toolkit for single-cell lineage tracing analysis

Nir Yosef, Jonathan S. Weissman, William N. Colgan, Matthew G. Jones et al.
3 links
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
preprint

Pycea: a scverse toolkit for single-cell lineage tracing analysis

Nir Yosef, Jonathan S. Weissman, William N. Colgan, Matthew G. Jones, Luke W. Koblan, Eric Weine
preprint en

Abstract

Lineage tracing enables reconstruction of cellular histories in development, regeneration, and disease, but integrating lineage data into single-cell analysis workflows remains challenging. We introduce Pycea, a Python toolkit for lineage analysis and visualization, and TreeData, an extension of AnnData that stores lineage trees alongside cellular measurements. TreeData is compatible with Scanpy and other scverse tools, enabling integrated analysis without converting between formats. Pycea provides scalable methods for tree visualization, clade identification, distance comparisons, ancestral state inference, and lineage statistics. This software is open source and available at https://github.com/YosefLab/pycea.

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (US), Weizmann Institute of Science (IL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, National Institutes of Health
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
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