# Arc Virtual Cell Challenge: A Primer

DevFeed: [Arc Virtual Cell Challenge: A Primer](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/arc-virtual-cell-challenge-a-primer-7556.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://huggingface.co/blog/virtual-cell-challenge>)

Author: Christopher Fleetwood; Abhinav Adduri

Published: 2025-07-18T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Hugging Face - Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/hugging-face-blog.md>)

Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [datasets](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/datasets.md>), [AI Research](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-research.md>), [Neural Network](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/neural-network.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>), [Open Source](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/open-source.md>)

Tags: [artificial-intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/artificial-intelligence.md>), [collaboration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/collaboration.md>), [dataset](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/dataset.md>), [guide](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/guide.md>), [model](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/model.md>), [neural](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/neural.md>), [open-source](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/open-source.md>), [train](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/train.md>), [training](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/training.md>)

## AI overview

This primer introduces the Arc Virtual Cell Challenge, which aims to train a neural network to predict how silencing a gene with CRISPR affects a cell. It explains the challenge dataset of roughly 300,000 single-cell RNA sequencing profiles, the transcriptome representation, control and perturbed cells, and the difficulty of separating perturbation signals from biological variation.

## Source excerpt

We're on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.