
==== Front
bioRxiv
BIORXIV
bioRxiv
2692-8205
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

39149311
10.1101/2024.08.05.606465
preprint
2
Article
Scalable imaging-free spatial genomics through computational reconstruction
Hu Chenlei http://orcid.org/0009-0002-8145-5623

Borji Mehdi
Marrero Giovanni J.
Kumar Vipin
Weir Jackson A.
Kammula Sachin V.
Macosko Evan Z. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2794-5165

Chen Fei http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2308-3649

16 9 2024
2024.08.05.606465https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
http://biorxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/2024.08.05.606465
nihpp-2024.08.05.606465.pdf
Tissue organization arises from the coordinated molecular programs of cells. Spatial genomics maps cells and their molecular programs within the spatial context of tissues. However, current methods measure spatial information through imaging or direct registration, which often require specialized equipment and are limited in scale. Here, we developed an imaging-free spatial transcriptomics method that uses molecular diffusion patterns to computationally reconstruct spatial data. To do so, we utilize a simple experimental protocol on two dimensional barcode arrays to establish an interaction network between barcodes via molecular diffusion. Sequencing these interactions generates a high dimensional matrix of interactions between different spatial barcodes. Then, we perform dimensionality reduction to regenerate a two-dimensional manifold, which represents the spatial locations of the barcode arrays. Surprisingly, we found that the UMAP algorithm, with minimal modifications can faithfully successfully reconstruct the arrays. We demonstrated that this method is compatible with capture array based spatial transcriptomics/genomics methods, Slide-seq and Slide-tags, with high fidelity. We systematically explore the fidelity of the reconstruction through comparisons with experimentally derived ground truth data, and demonstrate that reconstruction generates high quality spatial genomics data. We also scaled this technique to reconstruct high-resolution spatial information over areas up to 1.2 centimeters. This computational reconstruction method effectively converts spatial genomics measurements to molecular biology, enabling spatial transcriptomics with high accessibility, and scalability.
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pmc
