Sierra: discovery of differential transcript usage from polyA-captured single-cell RNA-seq data

Abstract High-throughput single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) is a powerful tool for studying gene expression in single cells. Most current scRNA-seq bioinformatics tools focus on analysing overall expression levels, largely ignoring alternative mRNA isoform expression. We present a computational pipelin...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ralph Patrick, David T. Humphreys, Vaibhao Janbandhu, Alicia Oshlack, Joshua W.K. Ho, Richard P. Harvey, Kitty K. Lo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2020-07-01
Series:Genome Biology
Subjects:
Online Access:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13059-020-02071-7
Description
Summary:Abstract High-throughput single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) is a powerful tool for studying gene expression in single cells. Most current scRNA-seq bioinformatics tools focus on analysing overall expression levels, largely ignoring alternative mRNA isoform expression. We present a computational pipeline, Sierra, that readily detects differential transcript usage from data generated by commonly used polyA-captured scRNA-seq technology. We validate Sierra by comparing cardiac scRNA-seq cell types to bulk RNA-seq of matched populations, finding significant overlap in differential transcripts. Sierra detects differential transcript usage across human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and the Tabula Muris, and 3 ′UTR shortening in cardiac fibroblasts. Sierra is available at https://github.com/VCCRI/Sierra .
ISSN:1474-760X