SPARCS enables scalable recovery of complex image-based phenotypes for genetic screening.

SPARCS enables scalable, image-based genetic screening of complex cellular phenotypes across 70 million cells, revealing key autophagy and immune regulation genes.

• Why it matters: Understanding complex cellular behaviors requires linking genetic perturbations to detailed phenotypes, which has been limited by scale and resolution in traditional screens.
• What they did: They developed SPARCS, a microscopy-based platform using laser microdissection and machine learning to perform genome-wide CRISPR knockout screens on single-cell images, analyzing millions of cells.
• The result: SPARCS successfully identified most macroautophagy genes and novel regulators of STING, demonstrating its potential to uncover intricate genotype-phenotype relationships at proteome resolution.