POPARI: Modeling multisample variation in spatial transcriptomics.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
Authors
Abstract

Integrating spatially-resolved transcriptomics (SRT) across biological samples is essential for understanding dynamic changes in tissue architecture and cell-cell interactions . While tools exist for multisample single-cell RNA-seq, methods tailored to multisample SRT remain limited. Here, we introduce Popari, a probabilistic graphical model for factor-based decomposition of multisample SRT that captures condition-specific changes in spatial organization. Popari jointly learns spatial metagenes - linear gene expression programs - and their spatial affinities across samples. Its key innovations include a differential prior to regularize spatial accordance and spatial downsampling to enable multiresolution, hierarchical analysis. Simulations show Popari outperforms existing methods on multisample and multi-resolution spatial metrics. Applications to real datasets uncover spatial metagene dynamics, spatial accordance, and cell identities. In mouse brain (STARmap PLUS), Popari identifies spatial metagenes linked to AD; in thymus (Slide-TCR-seq), it captures increasing colocalization of V(D)J recombination and T cell proliferation; and in ovarian cancer (CosMx), it reveals sample-specific malignant-immune interactions. Overall, Popari provides a general, interpretable framework for analyzing variation in multisample SRT.

Year of Publication
2025
Journal
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
Date Published
05/2025
ISSN
2692-8205
DOI
10.1101/2025.05.08.652741
PubMed ID
40462963
Links