Peer-Reviewed Publication
Nature2026;655(8124):1016-1026.July 1, 2026Journal Article

A deep-learning framework reveals whole-body perturbations at cell level.

Doris Kaltenecker1,2,3, Izabela Horvath4,5, Rami Al-Maskari4,5,6, Ying Chen6,7, Zeynep Ilgin Kolabas4,6, Luciano Hoeher4, Mihail Todorov4,6, David-Paul Minde4, Saketh Kapoor4, Sena Gül Turhan4, Louis B Kuemmerle4,8,9, Hanno Steinke10, Tim Wohlgemuth10, Mayar Ali4, Florian Kofler11,12,13,14, Pauline Morigny1,2,3, Julia Geppert1,2,3, Denise Jeridi4, Bastian Wittmann12, Jie Luo4,15,16, Suprosanna Shit12, Carolina Cigankova4, Victor Miro Kolenic4, Nilsu Gür4, Eren Aydeniz4, Alara Yücecan4, Melissa Ertürk4, Laurent H A Simons4,8, Chenchen Pan4,6,17, Marie Piraud11, Daniel Rueckert18,19, Maria Rohm1,2,3, Farida Hellal4,6, Markus Elsner4, Harsharan Singh Bhatia4,6, Ingo Bechmann10, Bjoern H Menze12, Stephan Herzig1,2,3,20, Johannes Christian Paetzold4,18,21,22, Mauricio Berriel Diaz1,2,3, Ali Ertürk23,24,25,26,27
1Institute for Diabetes and Cancer (IDC), Helmholtz Munich, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany.
2Joint Heidelberg-IDC Translational Diabetes Program, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany.
3German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), Neuherberg, Germany.
4Institute for Intelligent Biotechnologies, Helmholtz Munich, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany.
5TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology (CIT), Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
6Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research, Klinikum der Universität München, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität LMU, Munich, Germany.
7Munich Medical Research School (MMRS), Munich, Germany.
8Institute of Computational Biology, Helmholtz Munich, Neuherberg, Germany.
9School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany.
10Institute of Anatomy, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
11Helmholtz AI, Helmholtz Munich, Neuherberg, Germany.
12Department for Quantitative Biomedicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
13AI for Image-Guided Diagnosis and Therapy, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
14Hertie Institute for AI in Brain Health, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
15Department of Industrial and Molecular Pharmaceutics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
16Purdue University Institute for Cancer Research, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
17Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biology and Chemistry, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
18Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.
19Chair for AI in Healthcare and Medicine, Technical University of Munich (TUM) and TUM University Hospital, Munich, Germany.
20Chair Molecular Metabolic Control, TU, Munich, Germany.
21Department of Radiology, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
22Cornell Tech, New York, NY, USA.
23Institute for Intelligent Biotechnologies, Helmholtz Munich, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany. ali.erturk@helmholtz-munich.de.
24Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research, Klinikum der Universität München, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität LMU, Munich, Germany. ali.erturk@helmholtz-munich.de.
25School of Medicine, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey. ali.erturk@helmholtz-munich.de.
26Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology (SyNergy), Munich, Germany. ali.erturk@helmholtz-munich.de.
27Deep Piction, Munich, Germany. ali.erturk@helmholtz-munich.de.

Abstract

Many diseases, including obesity, have systemic effects that perturb multiple organ systems throughout the body1,2. However, tools for comprehensive, high-resolution analysis of disease-associated changes at the whole-body scale have been lacking. Here we developed MouseMapper, a suite of foundation-model-based deep-learning algorithms enabling multi-system analysis of disease across the entire mo…

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