We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Technical and biological variance structure in mRNA-Seq data: life in the real world.
- Authors
Oberg, Ann L.; Bot, Brian M.; Grill, Diane E.; Poland, Gregory A.; Therneau, Terry M.
- Abstract
Background: mRNA expression data from next generation sequencing platforms is obtained in the form of counts per gene or exon. Counts have classically been assumed to follow a Poisson distribution in which the variance is equal to the mean. The Negative Binomial distribution which allows for over-dispersion, i.e., for the variance to be greater than the mean, is commonly used to model count data as well. Results: In mRNA-Seq data from 25 subjects, we found technical variation to generally follow a Poisson distribution as has been reported previously and biological variability was over-dispersed relative to the Poisson model. The mean-variance relationship across all genes was quadratic, in keeping with a Negative Binomial (NB) distribution. Over-dispersed Poisson and NB distributional assumptions demonstrated marked improvements in goodness-of-fit (GOF) over the standard Poisson model assumptions, but with evidence of over-fitting in some genes. Modeling of experimental effects improved GOF for high variance genes but increased the over-fitting problem. Conclusions: These conclusions will guide development of analytical strategies for accurate modeling of variance structure in these data and sample size determination which in turn will aid in the identification of true biological signals that inform our understanding of biological systems.
- Subjects
MESSENGER RNA; BINOMIAL distribution; EXONS (Genetics); POISSON distribution; GENE expression
- Publication
BMC Genomics, 2012, Vol 13, Issue 1, p304
- ISSN
1471-2164
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1186/1471-2164-13-304