{"paper":{"title":"Beyond Continuity: Simulation-free Reconstruction of Discrete Branching Dynamics from Single-cell Snapshots","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"USB reconstructs discrete branching cell dynamics from snapshots by modeling Brownian motion and birth-death jumps.","cross_cats":["cs.AI","math-ph","math.MP","q-bio.GN","q-bio.QM"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Bowen Yang, Junda Ying, Lei Zhang, Peijie Zhou, Yuxuan Wang","submitted_at":"2026-05-01T09:57:13Z","abstract_excerpt":"Inferring cellular trajectories from destructive snapshots is complicated by the challenges of stochasticity and non-conservative mass dynamics such as cell proliferation and apoptosis. Existing unbalanced Optimal Transport (OT) methods treat mass as a continuous fluid, performing inference at the population level. However, this macroscopic view often fails to capture the discrete, jump-like nature of birth-death events at single-cell resolution, which is essential for understanding lineage branching and fate decisions. We present Unbalanced Schr\\\"odinger Bridge (USB), a simulation-free framew"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"USB provides a tractable solution to the Branching Schrödinger Bridge (BSB) problem, offering a rigorous microscopic interpretation where individual cells undergo both Brownian motion and discrete birth-death jumps.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"The assumption that cellular dynamics can be decomposed into continuous Brownian motion plus discrete birth-death jumps at single-cell resolution, and that this decomposition admits a simulation-free learning objective from population-level snapshots.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"Unbalanced Schrödinger Bridge (USB) provides a tractable, simulation-free solution to the Branching Schrödinger Bridge problem for modeling discrete birth-death dynamics at single-cell resolution from snapshot data.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"USB reconstructs discrete branching cell dynamics from snapshots by modeling Brownian motion and birth-death jumps.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"103e2fd16d06f60db01960c0e78664bd741f7ed0420f8721b8664ec968f4ce52"},"source":{"id":"2605.00545","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":"6f4f563c-0468-4c33-947c-3d796cf17b10","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-09T19:42:48.257814Z","strongest_claim":"USB provides a tractable solution to the Branching Schrödinger Bridge (BSB) problem, offering a rigorous microscopic interpretation where individual cells undergo both Brownian motion and discrete birth-death jumps.","one_line_summary":"Unbalanced Schrödinger Bridge (USB) provides a tractable, simulation-free solution to the Branching Schrödinger Bridge problem for modeling discrete birth-death dynamics at single-cell resolution from snapshot data.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"The assumption that cellular dynamics can be decomposed into continuous Brownian motion plus discrete birth-death jumps at single-cell resolution, and that this decomposition admits a simulation-free learning objective from population-level snapshots.","pith_extraction_headline":"USB reconstructs discrete branching cell dynamics from snapshots by modeling Brownian motion and birth-death jumps."},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.00545/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[{"name":"ai_meta_artifact","ran_at":"2026-05-20T19:40:10.116679Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"doi_compliance","ran_at":"2026-05-19T18:04:09.980898Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0}],"snapshot_sha256":"b3c929fa120e8114a3e4c8cad578fffbb83faa8872ebe3df991f2799b85dc1a5"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}