scholarly journals Differential analyses for RNA-seq: transcript-level estimates improve gene-level inferences

F1000Research ◽  
2016 ◽  
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. Various 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 the presence of differential isoform usage can lead to inflated false discovery rates in differential gene expression analyses on simple count matrices but that this can be addressed by incorporating offsets derived from transcript-level abundance estimates. We also show that the problem 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.

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.


Author(s):  
Tobias Tekath ◽  
Martin Dugas

Abstract Motivation Each year, the number of published bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data sets is growing exponentially. Studies analyzing such data are commonly looking at gene-level differences, while the collected RNA-seq data inherently represents reads of transcript isoform sequences. Utilizing transcriptomic quantifiers, RNA-seq reads can be attributed to specific isoforms, allowing for analysis of transcript-level differences. A differential transcript usage (DTU) analysis is testing for proportional differences in a gene’s transcript composition, and has been of rising interest for many research questions, such as analysis of differential splicing or cell type identification. Results We present the R package DTUrtle, the first DTU analysis workflow for both bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data sets, and the first package to conduct a ‘classical’ DTU analysis in a single-cell context. DTUrtle extends established statistical frameworks, offers various result aggregation and visualization options and a novel detection probability score for tagged-end data. It has been successfully applied to bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data of human and mouse, confirming and extending key results. Additionally, we present novel potential DTU applications like the identification of cell type specific transcript isoforms as biomarkers. Availability The R package DTUrtle is available at https://github.com/TobiTekath/DTUrtle with extensive vignettes and documentation at https://tobitekath.github.io/DTUrtle/. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael I. Love ◽  
Charlotte Soneson ◽  
Rob Patro

Detection of differential transcript usage (DTU) from RNA-seq data is an important bioinformatic analysis that complements differential gene expression analysis. Here we present a simple workflow using a set of existing R/Bioconductor packages for analysis of DTU. We show how these packages can be used downstream of RNA-seq quantification using the Salmon software package. The entire pipeline is fast, benefiting from inference steps by Salmon to quantify expression at the transcript level. The workflow includes live, runnable code chunks for analysis using DRIMSeq and DEXSeq, as well as for performing two-stage testing of DTU using the stageR package, a statistical framework to screen at the gene level and then confirm which transcripts within the significant genes show evidence of DTU. We evaluate these packages and other related packages on a simulated dataset with parameters estimated from real data.


BMC Genomics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (S11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingying Cao ◽  
Simo Kitanovski ◽  
Daniel Hoffmann

Abstract Background RNA-Seq, the high-throughput sequencing (HT-Seq) of mRNAs, has become an essential tool for characterizing gene expression differences between different cell types and conditions. Gene expression is regulated by several mechanisms, including epigenetically by post-translational histone modifications which can be assessed by ChIP-Seq (Chromatin Immuno-Precipitation Sequencing). As more and more biological samples are analyzed by the combination of ChIP-Seq and RNA-Seq, the integrated analysis of the corresponding data sets becomes, theoretically, a unique option to study gene regulation. However, technically such analyses are still in their infancy. Results Here we introduce intePareto, a computational tool for the integrative analysis of RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq data. With intePareto we match RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq data at the level of genes, perform differential expression analysis between biological conditions, and prioritize genes with consistent changes in RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq data using Pareto optimization. Conclusion intePareto facilitates comprehensive understanding of high dimensional transcriptomic and epigenomic data. Its superiority to a naive differential gene expression analysis with RNA-Seq and available integrative approach is demonstrated by analyzing a public dataset.


F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael I. Love ◽  
Charlotte Soneson ◽  
Rob Patro

Detection of differential transcript usage (DTU) from RNA-seq data is an important bioinformatic analysis that complements differential gene expression analysis. Here we present a simple workflow using a set of existing R/Bioconductor packages for analysis of DTU. We show how these packages can be used downstream of RNA-seq quantification using the Salmon software package. The entire pipeline is fast, benefiting from inference steps by Salmon to quantify expression at the transcript level. The workflow includes live, runnable code chunks for analysis using DRIMSeq and DEXSeq, as well as for performing two-stage testing of DTU using the stageR package, a statistical framework to screen at the gene level and then confirm which transcripts within the significant genes show evidence of DTU. We evaluate these packages and other related packages on a simulated dataset with parameters estimated from real data.


F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael I. Love ◽  
Charlotte Soneson ◽  
Rob Patro

Detection of differential transcript usage (DTU) from RNA-seq data is an important bioinformatic analysis that complements differential gene expression analysis. Here we present a simple workflow using a set of existing R/Bioconductor packages for analysis of DTU. We show how these packages can be used downstream of RNA-seq quantification using the Salmon software package. The entire pipeline is fast, benefiting from inference steps by Salmon to quantify expression at the transcript level. The workflow includes live, runnable code chunks for analysis using DRIMSeq and DEXSeq, as well as for performing two-stage testing of DTU using the stageR package, a statistical framework to screen at the gene level and then confirm which transcripts within the significant genes show evidence of DTU. We evaluate these packages and other related packages on a simulated dataset with parameters estimated from real data.


PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e8260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Necla Koçhan ◽  
G. Yazgi Tutuncu ◽  
Gordon K. Smyth ◽  
Luke C. Gandolfo ◽  
Göknur Giner

Classification on the basis of gene expression data derived from RNA-seq promises to become an important part of modern medicine. We propose a new classification method based on a model where the data is marginally negative binomial but dependent, thereby incorporating the dependence known to be present between measurements from different genes. The method, called qtQDA, works by first performing a quantile transformation (qt) then applying Gaussian quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA) using regularized covariance matrix estimates. We show that qtQDA has excellent performance when applied to real data sets and has advantages over some existing approaches. An R package implementing the method is also available on https://github.com/goknurginer/qtQDA.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Necla Koçhan ◽  
Gözde Y. Tütüncü ◽  
Gordon K. Smyth ◽  
Luke C. Gandolfo ◽  
Göknur Giner

AbstractClassification on the basis of gene expression data derived from RNA-seq promises to become an important part of modern medicine. We propose a new classification method based on a model where the data is marginally negative binomial but dependent, thereby incorporating the dependence known to be present between measurements from different genes. The method, called qtQDA, works by first performing a quantile transformation (qt) then applying Gaussian Quadratic Discriminant Analysis (QDA) using regularized covariance matrix estimates. We show that qtQDA has excellent performance when applied to real data sets and has advantages over some existing approaches. An R package implementing the method is also available.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yance Feng ◽  
Lei M. Li

Abstract Background Normalization of RNA-seq data aims at identifying biological expression differentiation between samples by removing the effects of unwanted confounding factors. Explicitly or implicitly, the justification of normalization requires a set of housekeeping genes. However, the existence of housekeeping genes common for a very large collection of samples, especially under a wide range of conditions, is questionable. Results We propose to carry out pairwise normalization with respect to multiple references, selected from representative samples. Then the pairwise intermediates are integrated based on a linear model that adjusts the reference effects. Motivated by the notion of housekeeping genes and their statistical counterparts, we adopt the robust least trimmed squares regression in pairwise normalization. The proposed method (MUREN) is compared with other existing tools on some standard data sets. The goodness of normalization emphasizes on preserving possible asymmetric differentiation, whose biological significance is exemplified by a single cell data of cell cycle. MUREN is implemented as an R package. The code under license GPL-3 is available on the github platform: github.com/hippo-yf/MUREN and on the conda platform: anaconda.org/hippo-yf/r-muren. Conclusions MUREN performs the RNA-seq normalization using a two-step statistical regression induced from a general principle. We propose that the densities of pairwise differentiations are used to evaluate the goodness of normalization. MUREN adjusts the mode of differentiation toward zero while preserving the skewness due to biological asymmetric differentiation. Moreover, by robustly integrating pre-normalized counts with respect to multiple references, MUREN is immune to individual outlier samples.


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