ToolUniverse

Stem cell, iPSC, and organoid research — pluripotency markers, differentiation protocol pathways, lineage commitment factors, organoid model selection. Use for iPSC characterization, differentiation protocol design via developmental-pathway recapitulation, and organoid-model selection for disease modeling.

Statistical modeling — linear/logistic/ordinal/Poisson regression, ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis, chi-square, Mann-Whitney, Cox survival, spline fits (R `ns()`), odds ratios, Cohen's d, F-statistic, p-value computation. Specializes in clinical-trial AE analysis (SDTM DM/AE), severity ordinal regression, and per-feature stat workflows.

Spatial transcriptomics analysis — Visium, MERFISH, seqFISH, Slide-seq. Maps gene expression to tissue architecture, identifies spatially variable genes (SVGs), tissue-domain segmentation, and cell-cell interaction inference. Use for spatial gene-expression questions, tissue architecture analysis, and SVG identification.

Spatial multi-omics interpretation pipeline. Transforms spatially variable genes (SVGs), domain annotations, and tissue context into biological insights via domain-by-domain characterization, cell-type composition, spatial gene expression patterns, RNA+protein+metabolite integration. Use for Visium, MERFISH, seqFISH, Slide-seq, spatial proteomics, and spatial multi-omics interpretation. Goes beyond statistics to disease mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities.

Small molecule identification, characterization, and procurement — PubChem, ChEMBL, BindingDB, ADMET-AI, SwissADME, eMolecules, Enamine. Covers compound name to structure to activity to ADMET properties to commercial sourcing. Use for chemical biology, lead identification, probe selection, and the full small-molecule discovery pipeline.

Single-cell RNA-seq analysis with scanpy/anndata — h5ad data loading, scRNA-seq quality control and QC gating (n_genes_by_counts, total_counts, mitochondrial percent / pct_counts_mt, pct_counts_ribo, doublet detection with Scrublet/scDblFinder, ambient RNA / SoupX awareness, empty-droplet filtering, MAD-based thresholds), normalization, dimensionality reduction (PCA, UMAP, t-SNE), clustering (Leiden, Louvain), marker gene identification, cell-type annotation, pseudotime/trajectory analysis. Use for any scRNA-seq workflow, including deciding which cells to filter, flag, or investigate before downstream analysis.

Retrieve DNA/RNA/protein sequences from NCBI and ENA with disambiguation. Quality hierarchy: RefSeq (NM_/NP_) > RefSeq predicted (XM_/XP_) > GenBank submissions. Use for fetching specific sequences by accession, gene-symbol-to-sequence lookup, transcript-isoform retrieval, and curated-vs-raw-submission preference.

Biological sequence analysis — gene/protein sequence retrieval (NCBI, Ensembl, UniProt), nucleotide/protein search, ortholog discovery, and FASTQ QC + alignment workflows (Trimmomatic, BWA, samtools, coverage depth). Use for sequence retrieval, sequence comparison, FASTQ QC analysis, and read alignment pre-processing.

Generate the success criteria for a task or question, then review work against them. Given a task, goal, or open-ended question, decompose it into scenarios, evaluation perspectives, and fine-grained weighted YES/NO criteria using the Recursive Expansion Tree (RET) method; if work is supplied, score it criterion-by-criterion and surface what is missing or could be better. Use when asked to self-review or check your own work, judge whether a task is done well or completely, build a definition-of-done or completeness checklist, create an evaluation rubric or grading criteria, score or grade answers to a question, set up an LLM-as-judge rubric, or when the user mentions self-review, completeness check, success criteria, evaluation criteria, scoring rubric, Qworld, or the RET algorithm.

Build AI scientist systems with the ToolUniverse Python SDK for scientific research. Covers the 3 calling patterns (`tu.run` portable dict API, `tu.tools.X` function API, direct class instantiation), tool loading, batch execution, MCP server integration, and embedding-based tool search. Use for SDK programming, custom tool composition, benchmarking pipelines, and integrating ToolUniverse into research workflows.

RNA-seq differential expression analysis with DESeq2, edgeR, and limma-voom — DEG lists, fold changes, dispersion estimation, design formulas including covariates, multi-condition contrasts, and Venn-set operations across groups. Routes across DESeq2 (default), edgeR (QL-F / exact test for small replicate counts), and limma-voom (large n / complex designs). Use when you have a count matrix + metadata, want to find DEGs, or need dispersion/PCA/clustering analysis. Includes RULE ZERO precedence (read executed.ipynb if present).

Given a set of residues in a protein, explain WHY they are functionally critical by combining structural context (binding interface, ligand pocket, core, secondary structure), UniProt features (active sites, binding sites, PTM sites, disulfides), optional SAE feature evidence, and optional DMS data. Accepts residues from any source: DMS hotspots (top-K by max effect), ClinVar recurrent variants, literature-reported hot regions, evolutionarily conserved positions, or user-curated lists. Returns a per-cluster mechanism call: catalytic / ligand-binding / interface / structural-core / PTM / regulatory / unknown.

Non-coding/regulatory variant interpretation — GWAS association lookup, eQTL evidence (GTEx), chromatin state (ENCODE), regulatory variant scoring (RegulomeDB, CADD), and TF-binding disruption. Use for non-coding GWAS hit interpretation, eQTL-based gene assignment, and regulatory mechanism reasoning. Distinct from coding-variant tools.

Transcription factor binding, cis-regulatory elements (cCREs), chromatin accessibility, and regulatory annotation using JASPAR (motifs), ENCODE (cCREs, ChIP-seq), RegulomeDB (regulatory variant scoring), UCSC — plus sequence-based deep-learning prediction of regulatory activity and non-coding variant effects (AlphaGenome, Enformer, Borzoi, ChromBPNet, Evo 2). Use for regulatory element annotation, TF-binding-site prediction, regulatory-region functional impact assessment, and predicting how a non-coding variant or a raw DNA sequence affects expression/chromatin/accessibility. Use this whenever a user asks what regulates a gene, whether a SNP hits a regulatory element, or to predict a non-coding variant's functional effect from sequence.

Rare disease genomics — disease identification (Orphanet), causative gene discovery, gene-disease validity (GenCC), variant interpretation (ClinVar), and translational research (ClinicalTrials.gov, drug repurposing for orphans). Use for rare-disease-gene curation, novel-gene-discovery analysis, and rare-disease drug-development support.

Rare disease differential diagnosis from patient phenotype — HPO term matching to candidate diseases (Orphanet, OMIM), gene panel prioritization, ACMG variant interpretation, and structure-based variant analysis. Use for diagnostic odyssey assistance, phenotype-to-disease ranking, and genetic-counseling differential generation.

Find and retrieve proteomics datasets from MassIVE and ProteomeXchange. Search by species, keyword, or accession; retrieve detailed metadata (instruments, publications, species, PTMs studied). Use for locating public proteomics datasets to reanalyze, comparing instrument/protocol coverage across studies, and pre-download dataset evaluation.

Mass-spec proteomics analysis — protein identification, quantification (LFQ, TMT, iTRAQ), differential expression (tumor vs normal, treatment vs control), PTM identification, and pathway enrichment on protein lists. Use when you have proteomics MS output, asking about protein abundance differences, or doing systems-level proteomic interpretation.

AI-guided de novo protein design — RFdiffusion backbone generation, ProteinMPNN sequence design, structure validation (pLDDT, pTM, MPNN scores). Use for designing therapeutic protein binders, novel scaffolds, enzyme variants, and miniprotein/protein-interface design before experimental validation.

Protein structure retrieval from RCSB PDB, PDBe, and AlphaFold with disambiguation, quality assessment (resolution, R-factor, pLDDT), and metadata. Distinguishes high-quality experimental (X-ray under 2 Angstrom) vs predicted vs medium-quality structures. Use for fetching protein structures, structure-quality comparison, and selecting structures for drug design or modeling.

Protein 3D structure prediction from sequence — ESMFold de novo prediction, AlphaFold database retrieval, experimental structures from RCSB, ProtVar variant impact assessment, ProtParam sequence properties. Use for structure prediction when no experimental structure exists, fold-confidence scoring, and structure-guided variant interpretation.

Given a PDB structure, produce a per-residue annotation table: which residues sit at a binding interface (vs a partner chain), which line a ligand pocket, which are buried (core) vs solvent-exposed (surface), and optionally secondary structure. This is the structural track drawn under a DMS heatmap and the structural prior SAE feature drops are read against. Use when you need to anchor a variant-interpretation or DMS analysis to the protein's actual physical context.

Interpret a missense variant via ESMC-6B Sparse Autoencoder (SAE) feature activations. For a given protein + variant, computes which interpretable SAE features (catalytic, ligand-binding, PTM, structural motif, domain, etc.) are lost or gained at the mutation site. Use when standard pathogenicity scores (AlphaMissense, ClinVar) say a variant is damaging but you need a MECHANISTIC explanation — e.g. 'why is this variant LoF?' Complements (does not replace) variant-interpretation and variant-to-mechanism skills, which focus on ACMG classification or regulatory mechanism.

Post-translational modification (PTM) analysis — phosphorylation, ubiquitination, acetylation, glycosylation, methylation. Uses iPTMnet (sites + enzymes), ProtVar (functional consequences), UniProt (baseline), STRING, ELM (linear motifs), MassIVE/ProteomeXchange (experimental). Use for PTM site annotation, kinase-substrate identification, and PTM-disease associations.

Propose the mechanism by which a missense variant causes loss-of-function (LoF), synthesizing evidence from 5 independent layers: AlphaMissense pathogenicity, AlphaFold structural context, ESMC sequence likelihood, SAE feature disruption, and DynaMut2 stability ΔΔG. Distinguishes 'structural stability LoF' (mis-folding) from 'direct functional disruption' (catalytic / binding / PTM site damage). Use for coding missense variants where you need a mechanistic causal model, not just a pathogenicity score.