scholarly journals SPARSim single cell: a count data simulator for scRNA-seq data

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.

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):  
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.


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.


Author(s):  
Irzam Sarfraz ◽  
Muhammad Asif ◽  
Joshua D Campbell

Abstract Motivation R Experiment objects such as the SummarizedExperiment or SingleCellExperiment are data containers for storing one or more matrix-like assays along with associated row and column data. These objects have been used to facilitate the storage and analysis of high-throughput genomic data generated from technologies such as single-cell RNA sequencing. One common computational task in many genomics analysis workflows is to perform subsetting of the data matrix before applying down-stream analytical methods. For example, one may need to subset the columns of the assay matrix to exclude poor-quality samples or subset the rows of the matrix to select the most variable features. Traditionally, a second object is created that contains the desired subset of assay from the original object. However, this approach is inefficient as it requires the creation of an additional object containing a copy of the original assay and leads to challenges with data provenance. Results To overcome these challenges, we developed an R package called ExperimentSubset, which is a data container that implements classes for efficient storage and streamlined retrieval of assays that have been subsetted by rows and/or columns. These classes are able to inherently provide data provenance by maintaining the relationship between the subsetted and parent assays. We demonstrate the utility of this package on a single-cell RNA-seq dataset by storing and retrieving subsets at different stages of the analysis while maintaining a lower memory footprint. Overall, the ExperimentSubset is a flexible container for the efficient management of subsets. Availability and implementation ExperimentSubset package is available at Bioconductor: https://bioconductor.org/packages/ExperimentSubset/ and Github: https://github.com/campbio/ExperimentSubset. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhun Miao ◽  
Ke Deng ◽  
Xiaowo Wang ◽  
Xuegong Zhang

AbstractSummaryThe excessive amount of zeros in single-cell RNA-seq data include “real” zeros due to the on-off nature of gene transcription in single cells and “dropout” zeros due to technical reasons. Existing differential expression (DE) analysis methods cannot distinguish these two types of zeros. We developed an R package DEsingle which employed Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial model to estimate the proportion of real and dropout zeros and to define and detect 3 types of DE genes in single-cell RNA-seq data with higher accuracy.Availability and ImplementationThe R package DEsingle is freely available at https://github.com/miaozhun/DEsingle and is under Bioconductor’s consideration [email protected] informationSupplementary data are available at bioRxiv online.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (24) ◽  
pp. 5155-5162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengzhong Ye ◽  
Terence P Speed ◽  
Agus Salim

Abstract Motivation Dropout is a common phenomenon in single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) data, and when left unaddressed it affects the validity of the statistical analyses. Despite this, few current methods for differential expression (DE) analysis of scRNA-seq data explicitly model the process that gives rise to the dropout events. We develop DECENT, a method for DE analysis of scRNA-seq data that explicitly and accurately models the molecule capture process in scRNA-seq experiments. Results We show that DECENT demonstrates improved DE performance over existing DE methods that do not explicitly model dropout. This improvement is consistently observed across several public scRNA-seq datasets generated using different technological platforms. The gain in improvement is especially large when the capture process is overdispersed. DECENT maintains type I error well while achieving better sensitivity. Its performance without spike-ins is almost as good as when spike-ins are used to calibrate the capture model. Availability and implementation The method is implemented as a publicly available R package available from https://github.com/cz-ye/DECENT. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1779-1784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuanqi Wang ◽  
Jun Li

Abstract Motivation Scaling by sequencing depth is usually the first step of analysis of bulk or single-cell RNA-seq data, but estimating sequencing depth accurately can be difficult, especially for single-cell data, risking the validity of downstream analysis. It is thus of interest to eliminate the use of sequencing depth and analyze the original count data directly. Results We call an analysis method ‘scale-invariant’ (SI) if it gives the same result under different estimates of sequencing depth and hence can use the original count data without scaling. For the problem of classifying samples into pre-specified classes, such as normal versus cancerous, we develop a deep-neural-network based SI classifier named scale-invariant deep neural-network classifier (SINC). On nine bulk and single-cell datasets, the classification accuracy of SINC is better than or competitive to the best of eight other classifiers. SINC is easier to use and more reliable on data where proper sequencing depth is hard to determine. Availability and implementation This source code of SINC is available at https://www.nd.edu/∼jli9/SINC.zip. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (15) ◽  
pp. 4233-4239
Author(s):  
Di Ran ◽  
Shanshan Zhang ◽  
Nicholas Lytal ◽  
Lingling An

Abstract Motivation Single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) has become an important tool to unravel cellular heterogeneity, discover new cell (sub)types, and understand cell development at single-cell resolution. However, one major challenge to scRNA-seq research is the presence of ‘drop-out’ events, which usually is due to extremely low mRNA input or the stochastic nature of gene expression. In this article, we present a novel single-cell RNA-seq drop-out correction (scDoc) method, imputing drop-out events by borrowing information for the same gene from highly similar cells. Results scDoc is the first method that directly involves drop-out information to accounting for cell-to-cell similarity estimation, which is crucial in scRNA-seq drop-out imputation but has not been appropriately examined. We evaluated the performance of scDoc using both simulated data and real scRNA-seq studies. Results show that scDoc outperforms the existing imputation methods in reference to data visualization, cell subpopulation identification and differential expression detection in scRNA-seq data. Availability and implementation R code is available at https://github.com/anlingUA/scDoc. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (16) ◽  
pp. 2865-2867 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tallulah S Andrews ◽  
Martin Hemberg

Abstract Motivation Most genomes contain thousands of genes, but for most functional responses, only a subset of those genes are relevant. To facilitate many single-cell RNASeq (scRNASeq) analyses the set of genes is often reduced through feature selection, i.e. by removing genes only subject to technical noise. Results We present M3Drop, an R package that implements popular existing feature selection methods and two novel methods which take advantage of the prevalence of zeros (dropouts) in scRNASeq data to identify features. We show these new methods outperform existing methods on simulated and real datasets. Availability and implementation M3Drop is freely available on github as an R package and is compatible with other popular scRNASeq tools: https://github.com/tallulandrews/M3Drop. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (24) ◽  
pp. 5306-5308
Author(s):  
Qi Liu ◽  
Quanhu Sheng ◽  
Jie Ping ◽  
Marisol Adelina Ramirez ◽  
Ken S Lau ◽  
...  

Abstract Summary Single cell RNA sequencing is a revolutionary technique to characterize inter-cellular transcriptomics heterogeneity. However, the data are noise-prone because gene expression is often driven by both technical artifacts and genuine biological variations. Proper disentanglement of these two effects is critical to prevent spurious results. While several tools exist to detect and remove low-quality cells in one single cell RNA-seq dataset, there is lack of approach to examining consistency between sample sets and detecting systematic biases, batch effects and outliers. We present scRNABatchQC, an R package to compare multiple sample sets simultaneously over numerous technical and biological features, which gives valuable hints to distinguish technical artifact from biological variations. scRNABatchQC helps identify and systematically characterize sources of variability in single cell transcriptome data. The examination of consistency across datasets allows visual detection of biases and outliers. Availability and implementation scRNABatchQC is freely available at https://github.com/liuqivandy/scRNABatchQC as an R package. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


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