scTranslation: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Single-Cell Multi-Omics Modality Translation

Simultaneous measurement of multiple omics modalities in single cells enables researchers to gain a more comprehensive understanding of cellular states and regulatory mechanisms. However, due to high experimental costs, significant noise, and incomplete modality coverage, a variety of computational methods for modality translation have emerged in recent years. Despite the development of translation models, there is still a lack of systematic benchmark evaluation in terms of datasets, evaluation metrics, and influencing factors. To address this, we present scTranslation, a comprehensive benchmark for single-cell multi-omics modality translation tasks. It includes diverse translation datasets, integrates state-of-the-art models, and provides a comprehensive evaluation metrics. In addition, we assess model performance under different scenarios, such as feature selection, feature quality, and few-shot settings. These factors significantly affect model performance but have rarely been systematically studied before. Leveraging this benchmark, we conduct a large-scale study of current methods, report many insightful findings that open up new possibilities for future development. The benchmark is open-sourced to facilitate future research. The code is anonymously released at https://github.com/Bunnybeibei/scTranslation.