scholarly journals Data-based RNA-seq Simulations by Binomial Thinning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Gerard

AbstractWith the explosion in the number of methods designed to analyze bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data, there is a growing need for approaches that assess and compare these methods. The usual technique is to compare methods on data simulated according to some theoretical model. However, as real data often exhibit violations from theoretical models, this can result in un-substantiated claims of a method’s performance. Rather than generate data from a theoretical model, in this paper we develop methods to add signal to real RNA-seq datasets. Since the resulting simulated data are not generated from an unrealistic theoretical model, they exhibit realistic (annoying) attributes of real data. This lets RNA-seq methods developers assess their procedures in non-ideal (model-violating) scenarios. Our procedures may be applied to both single-cell and bulk RNA-seq. We show that our simulation method results in more realistic datasets and can alter the conclusions of a differential expression analysis study. We also demonstrate our approach by comparing various factor analysis techniques on RNA-seq datasets. Our tools are available in the seqgendiff R package on the Comprehensive R Archive Net-work: https://cran.r-project.org/package=seqgendiff.

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (10) ◽  
pp. 3115-3123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teng Fei ◽  
Tianwei Yu

Abstract Motivation Batch effect is a frequent challenge in deep sequencing data analysis that can lead to misleading conclusions. Existing methods do not correct batch effects satisfactorily, especially with single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data. Results We present scBatch, a numerical algorithm for batch-effect correction on bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data with emphasis on improving both clustering and gene differential expression analysis. scBatch is not restricted by assumptions on the mechanism of batch-effect generation. As shown in simulations and real data analyses, scBatch outperforms benchmark batch-effect correction methods. Availability and implementation The R package is available at github.com/tengfei-emory/scBatch. The code to generate results and figures in this article is available at github.com/tengfei-emory/scBatch-paper-scripts. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


Author(s):  
Giacomo Baruzzo ◽  
Ilaria Patuzzi ◽  
Barbara Di Camillo

Abstract Motivation Single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) count data show many differences compared with bulk RNA-seq count data, making the application of many RNA-seq pre-processing/analysis methods not straightforward or even inappropriate. For this reason, the development of new methods for handling scRNA-seq count data is currently one of the most active research fields in bioinformatics. To help the development of such new methods, the availability of simulated data could play a pivotal role. However, only few scRNA-seq count data simulators are available, often showing poor or not demonstrated similarity with real data. Results In this article we present SPARSim, a scRNA-seq count data simulator based on a Gamma-Multivariate Hypergeometric model. We demonstrate that SPARSim allows to generate count data that resemble real data in terms of count intensity, variability and sparsity, performing comparably or better than one of the most used scRNA-seq simulator, Splat. In particular, SPARSim simulated count matrices well resemble the distribution of zeros across different expression intensities observed in real count data. Availability and implementation SPARSim R package is freely available at http://sysbiobig.dei.unipd.it/? q=SPARSim and at https://gitlab.com/sysbiobig/sparsim. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


Author(s):  
Krzysztof J Szkop ◽  
David S Moss ◽  
Irene Nobeli

Abstract Motivation We present flexible Modeling of Alternative PolyAdenylation (flexiMAP), a new beta-regression-based method implemented in R, for discovering differential alternative polyadenylation events in standard RNA-seq data. Results We show, using both simulated and real data, that flexiMAP exhibits a good balance between specificity and sensitivity and compares favourably to existing methods, especially at low fold changes. In addition, the tests on simulated data reveal some hitherto unrecognized caveats of existing methods. Importantly, flexiMAP allows modeling of multiple known covariates that often confound the results of RNA-seq data analysis. Availability and implementation The flexiMAP R package is available at: https://github.com/kszkop/flexiMAP. Scripts and data to reproduce the analysis in this paper are available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3689788. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron T. L. Lun ◽  
John C. Marioni

AbstractAn increasing number of studies are using single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) to characterize the gene expression profiles of individual cells. One common analysis applied to scRNA-seq data involves detecting differentially expressed (DE) genes between cells in different biological groups. However, many experiments are designed such that the cells to be compared are processed in separate plates or chips, meaning that the groupings are confounded with systematic plate effects. This confounding aspect is frequently ignored in DE analyses of scRNA-seq data. In this article, we demonstrate that failing to consider plate effects in the statistical model results in loss of type I error control. A solution is proposed whereby counts are summed from all cells in each plate and the count sums for all plates are used in the DE analysis. This restores type I error control in the presence of plate effects without compromising detection power in simulated data. Summation is also robust to varying numbers and library sizes of cells on each plate. Similar results are observed in DE analyses of real data where the use of count sums instead of single-cell counts improves specificity and the ranking of relevant genes. This suggests that summation can assist in maintaining statistical rigour in DE analyses of scRNA-seq data with plate effects.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Dimitrov ◽  
Quan Gu

AbstractRNA sequencing is a high-throughput sequencing technique considered as an indispensable research tool used in a broad range of transcriptome analysis studies. The most common application of RNA Sequencing is Differential Expression analysis and it is used to determine genetic loci with distinct expression across different conditions. On the other hand, an emerging field called single-cell RNA sequencing is used for transcriptome profiling at the individual cell level. The standard protocols for both these types of analyses include the processing of sequencing libraries and result in the generation of count matrices. An obstacle to these analyses and the acquisition of meaningful results is that both require programming expertise.BingleSeq was developed as an intuitive application that provides a user-friendly solution for the analysis of count matrices produced by both Bulk and Single-cell RNA-Seq experiments. This was achieved by building an interactive dashboard-like user interface and incorporating three state-of-the-art software packages for each type of the aforementioned analyses, alongside additional features such as key visualisation techniques, functional gene annotation analysis and rank-based consensus for differential gene analysis results, among others. As a result, BingleSeq puts the best and most widely used packages and tools for RNA-Seq analyses at the fingertips of biologists with no programming experience.


PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e10469
Author(s):  
Daniel Dimitrov ◽  
Quan Gu

Background RNA sequencing is an indispensable research tool used in a broad range of transcriptome analysis studies. The most common application of RNA Sequencing is differential expression analysis and it is used to determine genetic loci with distinct expression across different conditions. An emerging field called single-cell RNA sequencing is used for transcriptome profiling at the individual cell level. The standard protocols for both of these approaches include the processing of sequencing libraries and result in the generation of count matrices. An obstacle to these analyses and the acquisition of meaningful results is that they require programing expertise. Although some effort has been directed toward the development of user-friendly RNA-Seq analysis analysis tools, few have the flexibility to explore both Bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing. Implementation BingleSeq was developed as an intuitive application that provides a user-friendly solution for the analysis of count matrices produced by both Bulk and Single-cell RNA-Seq experiments. This was achieved by building an interactive dashboard-like user interface which incorporates three state-of-the-art software packages for each type of the aforementioned analyses. Furthermore, BingleSeq includes additional features such as visualization techniques, extensive functional annotation analysis and rank-based consensus for differential gene analysis results. As a result, BingleSeq puts some of the best reviewed and most widely used packages and tools for RNA-Seq analyses at the fingertips of biologists with no programing experience. Availability BingleSeq is as an easy-to-install R package available on GitHub at https://github.com/dbdimitrov/BingleSeq/.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chanwoo Kim ◽  
Hanbin Lee ◽  
Juhee Jeong ◽  
Keehoon Jung ◽  
Buhm Han

ABSTRACTA common approach to analyzing single-cell RNA-sequencing data is to cluster cells first and then identify differentially expressed genes based on the clustering result. However, clustering has an innate uncertainty and can be imperfect, undermining the reliability of differential expression analysis results. To overcome this challenge, we present MarcoPolo, a clustering-free approach to exploring differentially expressed genes. To find informative genes without clustering, MarcoPolo exploits the bimodality of gene expression to learn the group information of the cells with respect to the expression level directly from given data. Using simulations and real data analyses, we showed that our method puts biologically informative genes at higher ranks more accurately and robustly than other existing methods. As our method provides information on how cells can be grouped for each gene, it can help identify cell types that are not separated well in the standard clustering process. Our method can also be used as a feature selection method to improve the robustness against changes in the number of genes used in clustering.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (10) ◽  
pp. 3276-3278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alemu Takele Assefa ◽  
Jo Vandesompele ◽  
Olivier Thas

Abstract Summary SPsimSeq is a semi-parametric simulation method to generate bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing data. It is designed to simulate gene expression data with maximal retention of the characteristics of real data. It is reasonably flexible to accommodate a wide range of experimental scenarios, including different sample sizes, biological signals (differential expression) and confounding batch effects. Availability and implementation The R package and associated documentation is available from https://github.com/CenterForStatistics-UGent/SPsimSeq. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Westoby ◽  
Marcela Sjoberg ◽  
Anne Ferguson-Smith ◽  
Martin Hemberg

AbstractSingle-cell RNA-seq has the potential to facilitate isoform quantification as the confounding factor of a mixed population of cells is eliminated. We carried out a benchmark for five popular isoform quantification tools. Performance was generally good when run on simulated data based on SMARTer and SMART-seq2 data, but was poor for simulated Drop-seq data. Importantly, the reduction in performance for single-cell RNA-seq compared with bulk RNA-seq was small. An important biological insight comes from our analysis of real data which showed that genes that express two isoforms in bulk RNA-seq predominantly express one or neither isoform in individual cells.


F1000Research ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Soneson ◽  
Michael I. Love ◽  
Mark D. Robinson

High-throughput sequencing of cDNA (RNA-seq) is used extensively to characterize the transcriptome of cells. Many transcriptomic studies aim at comparing either abundance levels or the transcriptome composition between given conditions, and as a first step, the sequencing reads must be used as the basis for abundance quantification of transcriptomic features of interest, such as genes or transcripts. Several different quantification approaches have been proposed, ranging from simple counting of reads that overlap given genomic regions to more complex estimation of underlying transcript abundances. In this paper, we show that gene-level abundance estimates and statistical inference offer advantages over transcript-level analyses, in terms of performance and interpretability. We also illustrate that while the presence of differential isoform usage can lead to inflated false discovery rates in differential expression analyses on simple count matrices and transcript-level abundance estimates improve the performance in simulated data, the difference is relatively minor in several real data sets. Finally, we provide an R package (tximport) to help users integrate transcript-level abundance estimates from common quantification pipelines into count-based statistical inference engines.


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