Beyond Continuity: Simulation-free Reconstruction of Discrete Branching Dynamics from Single-cell Snapshots

arXiv:2605.00545v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: 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,...