BlockFormer: Transformer-based inference from interaction maps

Inference from interaction maps, such as centromere identification from genome-wide chromosome conformation capture techniques –notably Hi-C– can be formulated as a generic inverse problem: infer a set of parameters given a map summarizing pairwise interactions between entities through blocks of variable numbers and sizes. In this work, we introduce a data-driven approach that leverages shared structure between these maps, such as global alignment between localized patterns, while handling the variability in number and size of entities arising in real-world data. Our approach relies on a transformer architecture capable of handling such variability and a custom simulator to generate abundant, yet computationally cheap synthetic data for training. Applied to the problem of centromere localization, the method accurately recover their genomic positions across a wide range of species of various genome sizes.