Skip to content

UCE 4-layer

UCE, or Universal Cell Embeddings, creates a numeric representation of each cell in a single-cell dataset. Those vectors can be used for comparison, clustering, visualization, and downstream analysis.

When to use it

Use UCE when you have an AnnData .h5ad file and want cell embeddings rather than cell-type labels.

Use UCE when a multi-species foundation-model embedding is the required output.

What Liatir installs

Liatir installs the signed UCE macOS arm64 Metal Runtime Box, including the 4-layer weights and complete tested environment. Nothing is added to the base app or system Python.

Inputs

The direct runner and pipeline AI Tool expect:

  • an AnnData .h5ad file;
  • a species selection;
  • optional batch size and CSV preview size settings.

UCE expects the AnnData .X matrix to contain scRNA-seq counts. It also expects var_names to contain gene symbols, not Ensembl IDs.

Outputs

Liatir creates:

  • an embedded .h5ad file with embeddings stored in obsm["X_uce"];
  • a lightweight CSV preview of the first embedded cells;
  • a JSON summary with cell count, gene count, embedding size, settings, and warnings;
  • intermediate files produced by the UCE workflow, marked as intermediate artifacts in Results.

The .h5ad output is the main scientific artifact. The CSV is intentionally a preview so large datasets do not create huge duplicate embedding tables.

Hardware

The UCE model card lists GPU as the system requirement. Liatir allows CPU runs for small validation datasets, but they can be slow. For repeated or large single-cell runs, use a GPU-capable workstation.

Good to know

Liatir currently exposes the official 4-layer UCE workflow. The larger 33-layer workflow is not available yet.

Supported species are:

  • human;
  • mouse;
  • frog;
  • zebrafish;
  • mouse lemur;
  • pig;
  • crab-eating macaque;
  • rhesus macaque.

Official source