scholarly journals Evaluation of methods to assign cell type labels to cell clusters from single-cell RNA-sequencing data

F1000Research ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 296 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Javier Diaz-Mejia ◽  
Elaine C. Meng ◽  
Alexander R. Pico ◽  
Sonya A. MacParland ◽  
Troy Ketela ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Gene Expression Signature ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Cell Clusters ◽  
Reference Cell ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing ◽  
Gene Expression Signatures ◽  
Type Gene

Background: Identification of cell type subpopulations from complex cell mixtures using single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data includes automated computational steps like data normalization, dimensionality reduction and cell clustering. However, assigning cell type labels to cell clusters is still conducted manually by most researchers, resulting in limited documentation, low reproducibility and uncontrolled vocabularies. Two bottlenecks to automating this task are the scarcity of reference cell type gene expression signatures and the fact that some dedicated methods are available only as web servers with limited cell type gene expression signatures. Methods: In this study, we benchmarked four methods (CIBERSORT, GSEA, GSVA, and ORA) for the task of assigning cell type labels to cell clusters from scRNA-seq data. We used scRNA-seq datasets from liver, peripheral blood mononuclear cells and retinal neurons for which reference cell type gene expression signatures were available. Results: Our results show that, in general, all four methods show a high performance in the task as evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis (average area under the curve (AUC) = 0.94, sd = 0.036), whereas precision-recall curve analyses show a wide variation depending on the method and dataset (average AUC = 0.53, sd = 0.24). Conclusions: CIBERSORT and GSVA were the top two performers. Additionally, GSVA was the fastest of the four methods and was more robust in cell type gene expression signature subsampling simulations. We provide an extensible framework to evaluate other methods and datasets at https://github.com/jdime/scRNAseq_cell_cluster_labeling.

scholarly journals Evaluation of methods to assign cell type labels to cell clusters from single-cell RNAsequencing data

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Javier Díaz-Mejía ◽  
Elaine C. Meng ◽  
Alexander R. Pico ◽  
Sonya A. MacParland ◽  
Troy Ketela ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Mononuclear Cells ◽  
Characteristic Curve ◽  
Gene Expression Signature ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Cell Clusters ◽  
Reference Cell ◽  
Gene Expression Signatures ◽  
Type Gene

AbstractIdentification of cell type subpopulations from complex cell mixtures using single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data includes automated computational steps like data normalization, dimensionality reduction and cell clustering. However, assigning cell type labels to cell clusters is still conducted manually by most researchers, resulting in limited documentation, low reproducibility and uncontrolled vocabularies. Two bottlenecks to automating this task are the scarcity of reference cell type gene expression signatures and that some dedicated methods are available only as web servers with limited cell type gene expression signatures. In this study, we benchmarked four methods (CIBERSORT, GSEA, GSVA, and ORA) for the task of assigning cell type labels to cell clusters from scRNA-seq data. We used scRNA-seq datasets from liver, peripheral blood mononuclear cells and retinal neurons for which reference cell type gene expression signatures were available. Our results show that, in general, all four methods show a high performance in the task as evaluated by Receiver Operating Characteristic curve analysis (average AUC = 0.94, sd = 0.036), whereas Precision-Recall curve analyses show a wide variation depending on the method and dataset (average AUC = 0.53, sd = 0.24). CIBERSORT and GSVA were the top two performers. Additionally, GSVA was the fastest of the four methods and was more robust in cell type gene expression signature subsampling simulations. We provide an extensible framework to evaluate other methods and datasets at https://github.com/jdime/scRNAseq_cell_cluster_labeling.

scholarly journals Evaluation of methods to assign cell type labels to cell clusters from single-cell RNA-sequencing data

F1000Research ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 296 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Javier Diaz-Mejia ◽  
Elaine C. Meng ◽  
Alexander R. Pico ◽  
Sonya A. MacParland ◽  
Troy Ketela ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Human Peripheral Blood ◽  
Characteristic Curve ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Sequencing Data ◽  
Cell Clusters ◽  
Reference Cell ◽  
Mouse Tissues ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing

Background: Identification of cell type subpopulations from complex cell mixtures using single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data includes automated steps from normalization to cell clustering. However, assigning cell type labels to cell clusters is often conducted manually, resulting in limited documentation, low reproducibility and uncontrolled vocabularies. This is partially due to the scarcity of reference cell type signatures and because some methods support limited cell type signatures. Methods: In this study, we benchmarked five methods representing first-generation enrichment analysis (ORA), second-generation approaches (GSEA and GSVA), machine learning tools (CIBERSORT) and network-based neighbor voting (METANEIGHBOR), for the task of assigning cell type labels to cell clusters from scRNA-seq data. We used five scRNA-seq datasets: human liver, 11 Tabula Muris mouse tissues, two human peripheral blood mononuclear cell datasets, and mouse retinal neurons, for which reference cell type signatures were available. The datasets span Drop-seq, 10X Chromium and Seq-Well technologies and range in size from ~3,700 to ~68,000 cells. Results: Our results show that, in general, all five methods perform well in the task as evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis (average area under the curve (AUC) = 0.91, sd = 0.06), whereas precision-recall analyses show a wide variation depending on the method and dataset (average AUC = 0.53, sd = 0.24). We observed an influence of the number of genes in cell type signatures on performance, with smaller signatures leading more frequently to incorrect results. Conclusions: GSVA was the overall top performer and was more robust in cell type signature subsampling simulations, although different methods performed well using different datasets. METANEIGHBOR and GSVA were the fastest methods. CIBERSORT and METANEIGHBOR were more influenced than the other methods by analyses including only expected cell types. We provide an extensible framework that can be used to evaluate other methods and datasets at https://github.com/jdime/scRNAseq_cell_cluster_labeling.

scholarly journals Evaluation of methods to assign cell type labels to cell clusters from single-cell RNA-sequencing data

F1000Research ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 296 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Javier Diaz-Mejia ◽  
Elaine C. Meng ◽  
Alexander R. Pico ◽  
Sonya A. MacParland ◽  
Troy Ketela ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Human Peripheral Blood ◽  
Characteristic Curve ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Sequencing Data ◽  
Cell Clusters ◽  
Reference Cell ◽  
Mouse Tissues ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing

Background: Identification of cell type subpopulations from complex cell mixtures using single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data includes automated steps from normalization to cell clustering. However, assigning cell type labels to cell clusters is often conducted manually, resulting in limited documentation, low reproducibility and uncontrolled vocabularies. This is partially due to the scarcity of reference cell type signatures and because some methods support limited cell type signatures. Methods: In this study, we benchmarked five methods representing first-generation enrichment analysis (ORA), second-generation approaches (GSEA and GSVA), machine learning tools (CIBERSORT) and network-based neighbor voting (METANEIGHBOR), for the task of assigning cell type labels to cell clusters from scRNA-seq data. We used five scRNA-seq datasets: human liver, 11 Tabula Muris mouse tissues, two human peripheral blood mononuclear cell datasets, and mouse retinal neurons, for which reference cell type signatures were available. The datasets span Drop-seq, 10X Chromium and Seq-Well technologies and range in size from ~3,700 to ~68,000 cells. Results: Our results show that, in general, all five methods perform well in the task as evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis (average area under the curve (AUC) = 0.91, sd = 0.06), whereas precision-recall analyses show a wide variation depending on the method and dataset (average AUC = 0.53, sd = 0.24). We observed an influence of the number of genes in cell type signatures on performance, with smaller signatures leading more frequently to incorrect results. Conclusions: GSVA was the overall top performer and was more robust in cell type signature subsampling simulations, although different methods performed well using different datasets. METANEIGHBOR and GSVA were the fastest methods. CIBERSORT and METANEIGHBOR were more influenced than the other methods by analyses including only expected cell types. We provide an extensible framework that can be used to evaluate other methods and datasets at https://github.com/jdime/scRNAseq_cell_cluster_labeling.

scholarly journals Single-cell RNA sequencing of the mammalian pineal gland identifies two pinealocyte subtypes and cell type-specific daily patterns of gene expression

PLoS ONE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. e0205883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph C. Mays ◽  
Michael C. Kelly ◽  
Steven L. Coon ◽  
Lynne Holtzclaw ◽  
Martin F. Rath ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Pineal Gland ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing ◽  
Cell Type Specific ◽  
Mammalian Pineal Gland ◽  
Daily Patterns

scholarly journals SIMPLEs: a single-cell RNA sequencing imputation strategy preserving gene modules and cell clusters variation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhirui Hu ◽  
Songpeng Zu ◽  
Jun S. Liu
Keyword(s):  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Stem Cell Differentiation ◽  
Marker Genes ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Imputation Methods ◽  
Cell Clusters ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing ◽  
Gene Modules

AbstractA main challenge in analyzing single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNASeq) data is to reduce technical variations yet retain cell heterogeneity. Due to low mRNAs content per cell and molecule losses during the experiment (called “dropout”), the gene expression matrix has substantial zero read counts. Existing imputation methods either treat each cell or each gene identically and independently, which oversimplifies the gene correlation and cell type structure. We propose a statistical model-based approach, called SIMPLEs, which iteratively identifies correlated gene modules and cell clusters and imputes dropouts customized for individual gene module and cell type. Simultaneously, it quantifies the uncertainty of imputation and cell clustering. Optionally, SIMPLEs can integrate bulk RNASeq data for estimating dropout rates. In simulations, SIMPLEs performed significantly better than prevailing scRNASeq imputation methods by various metrics. By applying SIMPLEs to several real data sets, we discovered gene modules that can further classify subtypes of cells. Our imputations successfully recovered the expression trends of marker genes in stem cell differentiation and can discover putative pathways regulating biological processes.

scholarly journals SCDC: bulk gene expression deconvolution by multiple single-cell RNA sequencing references

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meichen Dong ◽  
Aatish Thennavan ◽  
Eugene Urrutia ◽  
Yun Li ◽  
Charles M Perou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Expression Profiles ◽  
Gene Expression Profiles ◽  
Specific Gene ◽  
Rna Seq ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Mixed Cell ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing

Abstract Recent advances in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) enable characterization of transcriptomic profiles with single-cell resolution and circumvent averaging artifacts associated with traditional bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data. Here, we propose SCDC, a deconvolution method for bulk RNA-seq that leverages cell-type specific gene expression profiles from multiple scRNA-seq reference datasets. SCDC adopts an ENSEMBLE method to integrate deconvolution results from different scRNA-seq datasets that are produced in different laboratories and at different times, implicitly addressing the problem of batch-effect confounding. SCDC is benchmarked against existing methods using both in silico generated pseudo-bulk samples and experimentally mixed cell lines, whose known cell-type compositions serve as ground truths. We show that SCDC outperforms existing methods with improved accuracy of cell-type decomposition under both settings. To illustrate how the ENSEMBLE framework performs in complex tissues under different scenarios, we further apply our method to a human pancreatic islet dataset and a mouse mammary gland dataset. SCDC returns results that are more consistent with experimental designs and that reproduce more significant associations between cell-type proportions and measured phenotypes.

scholarly journals Single cell RNA sequencing identifies IGFBP5 and QKI as ciliated epithelial cell genes associated with severe COPD

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiuying Li ◽  
Guillaume Noell ◽  
Tracy Tabib ◽  
Alyssa D. Gregory ◽  
Humberto E. Trejo Bittar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Epithelial Cells ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Protein Levels ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing ◽  
Ciliated Epithelial Cells ◽  
Severe Copd

Abstract Background Whole lung tissue transcriptomic profiling studies in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have led to the identification of several genes associated with the severity of airflow limitation and/or the presence of emphysema, however, the cell types driving these gene expression signatures remain unidentified. Methods To determine cell specific transcriptomic changes in severe COPD, we conducted single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA seq) on n = 29,961 cells from the peripheral lung parenchymal tissue of nonsmoking subjects without underlying lung disease (n = 3) and patients with severe COPD (n = 3). The cell type composition and cell specific gene expression signature was assessed. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was used to identify the specific cell types contributing to the previously reported transcriptomic signatures. Results T-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding and clustering of scRNA seq data revealed a total of 17 distinct populations. Among them, the populations with more differentially expressed genes in cases vs. controls (log fold change >|0.4| and FDR = 0.05) were: monocytes (n = 1499); macrophages (n = 868) and ciliated epithelial cells (n = 590), respectively. Using GSEA, we found that only ciliated and cytotoxic T cells manifested a trend towards enrichment of the previously reported 127 regional emphysema gene signatures (normalized enrichment score [NES] = 1.28 and = 1.33, FDR = 0.085 and = 0.092 respectively). Among the significantly altered genes present in ciliated epithelial cells of the COPD lungs, QKI and IGFBP5 protein levels were also found to be altered in the COPD lungs. Conclusions scRNA seq is useful for identifying transcriptional changes and possibly individual protein levels that may contribute to the development of emphysema in a cell-type specific manner.

scholarly journals Implication of specific retinal cell-type involvement and gene expression changes in AMD progression using integrative analysis of single-cell and bulk RNA-seq profiling

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yafei Lyu ◽  
Randy Zauhar ◽  
Nicholas Dana ◽  
Christianne E. Strang ◽  
Jian Hu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Age Related Macular Degeneration ◽  
Specific Gene ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Adult Human ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing ◽  
Cell Type Specific ◽  
Cell Data

AbstractAge‐related macular degeneration (AMD) is a blinding eye disease with no unifying theme for its etiology. We used single-cell RNA sequencing to analyze the transcriptomes of ~ 93,000 cells from the macula and peripheral retina from two adult human donors and bulk RNA sequencing from fifteen adult human donors with and without AMD. Analysis of our single-cell data identified 267 cell-type-specific genes. Comparison of macula and peripheral retinal regions found no cell-type differences but did identify 50 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) with about 1/3 expressed in cones. Integration of our single-cell data with bulk RNA sequencing data from normal and AMD donors showed compositional changes more pronounced in macula in rods, microglia, endothelium, Müller glia, and astrocytes in the transition from normal to advanced AMD. KEGG pathway analysis of our normal vs. advanced AMD eyes identified enrichment in complement and coagulation pathways, antigen presentation, tissue remodeling, and signaling pathways including PI3K-Akt, NOD-like, Toll-like, and Rap1. These results showcase the use of single-cell RNA sequencing to infer cell-type compositional and cell-type-specific gene expression changes in intact bulk tissue and provide a foundation for investigating molecular mechanisms of retinal disease that lead to new therapeutic targets.

scholarly journals SCDC: Bulk Gene Expression Deconvolution by Multiple Single-Cell RNA Sequencing References

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meichen Dong ◽  
Aatish Thennavan ◽  
Eugene Urrutia ◽  
Yun Li ◽  
Charles M. Perou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Expression Profiles ◽  
Gene Expression Profiles ◽  
Specific Gene ◽  
Rna Seq ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Mixed Cell ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing

AbstractRecent advances in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) enable characterization of transcriptomic profiles with single-cell resolution and circumvent averaging artifacts associated with traditional bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data. Here, we propose SCDC, a deconvolution method for bulk RNA-seq that leverages cell-type specific gene expression profiles from multiple scRNA-seq reference datasets. SCDC adopts an ENSEMBLE method to integrate deconvolution results from different scRNA-seq datasets that are produced in different laboratories and at different times, implicitly addressing the problem of batch-effect confounding. SCDC is benchmarked against existing methods using both in silico generated pseudo-bulk samples and experimentally mixed cell lines, whose known cell-type compositions serve as ground truths. We show that SCDC outperforms existing methods with improved accuracy of cell-type decomposition under both settings. To illustrate how the ENSEMBLE framework performs in complex tissues under different scenarios, we further apply our method to a human pancreatic islet dataset and a mouse mammary gland dataset. SCDC returns results that are more consistent with experimental designs and that reproduce more significant associations between cell-type proportions and measured phenotypes.

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