---
name: geniml
description: Machine learning toolkit for genomic interval (BED) data; use it when you need to tokenize BED collections and train embeddings for regions/cells/labels, build consensus peak universes, or run similarity search and downstream ML on chromatin accessibility datasets.
license: MIT
author: aipoch
---
> **Source**: [https://github.com/aipoch/medical-research-skills](https://github.com/aipoch/medical-research-skills)

## When to Use

- **You have many BED files and need numeric features** for clustering, similarity search, or downstream supervised learning (e.g., ChIP-seq/ATAC-seq region sets).
- **You want unsupervised embeddings of genomic regions** to compare region sets across experiments (Region2Vec).
- **You need joint embeddings of regions and metadata labels** (e.g., tissue/cell type/condition) to enable cross-modal queries like *Region → Label* or *Label → Region* (BEDspace).
- **You are analyzing single-cell ATAC-seq** and want cell embeddings for clustering/annotation and integration with Scanpy workflows (scEmbed).
- **You need a consensus peak set (“universe”)** built from multiple BED files to standardize tokenization and region definitions across datasets (Universe construction).

## Key Features

- **Region2Vec**: Word2vec-style unsupervised embeddings for genomic regions from tokenized BED data.
- **BEDspace**: StarSpace-based joint embedding space for region sets and metadata labels; supports similarity search and cross-modal retrieval.
- **scEmbed**: Single-cell ATAC-seq embedding workflow (tokenize cells → train → encode cells) compatible with Scanpy.
- **Universe (Consensus Peaks) Builder**: Generates reference peak sets using multiple statistical approaches (CC, CCF, ML, HMM).
- **Utilities**:
  - **Tokenization**: Universe-based tokenization (hard/soft tokenization patterns).
  - **Evaluation**: Embedding quality metrics (e.g., silhouette, Davies–Bouldin).
  - **BEDshift**: Region randomization/null-model generation while preserving genomic context.
  - **BBClient / caching**: Faster repeated access to BED resources.
  - **Text2BedNN**: Neural search backend for genomic queries.

> Additional details are commonly documented in: `references/region2vec.md`, `references/bedspace.md`, `references/scembed.md`, `references/consensus_peaks.md`, `references/utilities.md`.

## Dependencies

- **Python**: 3.9+ (recommended)
- **geniml**: latest from PyPI (or GitHub main)
- **Optional ML extras**: `geniml[ml]` (typically pulls **PyTorch** and related ML dependencies)
- **Scanpy stack (for scEmbed workflows)**: `scanpy` (plus `anndata`, `numpy`, `scipy`)
- **StarSpace (for BEDspace training)**: external binary from https://github.com/facebookresearch/StarSpace
- **Universe coverage generation**: `uniwig` (used to generate coverage tracks in universe workflows)

## Example Usage

### 1) Install

```bash
# Base install
uv pip install geniml

# With ML extras (e.g., PyTorch and related dependencies)
uv pip install "geniml[ml]"

# Development version
uv pip install git+https://github.com/databio/geniml.git
```

### 2) End-to-end: Build a universe → tokenize BEDs → train Region2Vec → evaluate

```bash
# (A) Build coverage tracks (example pattern)
cat bed_files/*.bed > combined.bed
uniwig -m 25 combined.bed chrom.sizes coverage/

# (B) Build a universe (coverage cutoff method)
geniml universe build cc \
  --coverage-folder coverage/ \
  --output-file universe.bed \
  --cutoff 5 \
  --merge 100 \
  --filter-size 50
```

```python
# (C) Tokenize BED files, train Region2Vec, and evaluate embeddings
from geniml.tokenization import hard_tokenization
from geniml.region2vec import region2vec
from geniml.evaluation import evaluate_embeddings

# 1) Tokenize BED files against the universe
hard_tokenization(
    src_folder="bed_files/",
    dst_folder="tokens/",
    universe_file="universe.bed",
    p_value_threshold=1e-9,
)

# 2) Train Region2Vec
region2vec(
    token_folder="tokens/",
    save_dir="model/",
    num_shufflings=1000,
    embedding_dim=100,
)

# 3) Evaluate (requires labels/metadata aligned to embeddings)
metrics = evaluate_embeddings(
    embeddings_file="model/embeddings.npy",
    labels_file="metadata.csv",
)

print(metrics)
```

### 3) Single-cell ATAC-seq: tokenize cells → train scEmbed → cluster with Scanpy

```python
import scanpy as sc
from geniml.scembed import ScEmbed
from geniml.io import tokenize_cells

# 1) Load AnnData
adata = sc.read_h5ad("scatac_data.h5ad")

# 2) Tokenize cells using a universe
tokenize_cells(
    adata="scatac_data.h5ad",
    universe_file="universe.bed",
    output="tokens.parquet",
)

# 3) Train scEmbed
model = ScEmbed(embedding_dim=100)
model.train(dataset="tokens.parquet", epochs=100)

# 4) Encode cells and attach embeddings to AnnData
embeddings = model.encode(adata)
adata.obsm["scembed_X"] = embeddings

# 5) Standard Scanpy neighborhood graph + clustering + UMAP
sc.pp.neighbors(adata, use_rep="scembed_X")
sc.tl.leiden(adata)
sc.tl.umap(adata)
```

## Implementation Details

### Tokenization (Universe-based)
- **Goal**: Convert genomic intervals into discrete “tokens” defined by a reference **universe** (consensus peak set).
- **Hard tokenization**: Assigns intervals to universe bins/peaks deterministically (commonly used for Region2Vec/scEmbed pipelines).
- **Key parameter**: `p_value_threshold` controls stringency of mapping/overlap significance (lower is stricter; overly strict thresholds can reduce coverage).

### Region2Vec (Region Embeddings)
- **Core idea**: Treat each BED file (or region set) like a “document” and each universe peak like a “word”; learn embeddings using a word2vec-style objective.
- **Important knobs**:
  - `embedding_dim`: dimensionality of learned vectors (e.g., 50–300).
  - `num_shufflings`: increases training signal by shuffling/co-occurrence augmentation; higher values increase runtime.

### BEDspace (Joint Region + Label Embeddings)
- **Core idea**: Learn a shared vector space for region sets and metadata labels using **StarSpace**, enabling:
  - **Region → Label** retrieval (predict likely labels for a query region set)
  - **Label → Region** retrieval (find region sets associated with a label)
- **Operational requirement**: StarSpace must be installed and its path provided/configured for training.

### scEmbed (Single-cell Embeddings)
- **Core idea**: Apply Region2Vec-like training on tokenized single-cell accessibility profiles to produce **cell embeddings**.
- **Best practice**: **Pre-tokenize** cells (e.g., to Parquet) to reduce repeated preprocessing and speed up training.
- **Downstream**: Use embeddings as `adata.obsm[...]` and run standard Scanpy steps (neighbors, Leiden, UMAP).

### Universe Construction (Consensus Peaks)
- **Purpose**: Create a stable reference peak set for tokenization and cross-dataset comparability.
- **Methods**:
  - **CC (Coverage Cutoff)**: threshold-based peak calling from coverage.
  - **CCF (Coverage Cutoff Flexible)**: cutoff with flexible boundaries/confidence intervals.
  - **ML (Maximum Likelihood)**: probabilistic modeling of peak positions.
  - **HMM (Hidden Markov Model)**: state-based segmentation; typically most computationally intensive.
- **Typical parameters**:
  - `--cutoff`: minimum coverage to call peaks (CC/CCF).
  - `--merge`: merge distance for nearby peaks.
  - `--filter-size`: minimum peak length to keep.