Complex Sources of Variation in Tissue Expression Data: Analysis of the GTEx Lung Transcriptome.

ABSTRACT: The sources of gene expression variability in human tissues are thought to be a complex interplay of technical, compositional, and disease-related factors. To better understand these contributions, we investigated expression variability in a relatively homogeneous tissue expression dataset from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) resource. In addition to identifying technical sources, such as sequencing date and post-mortem interval, we also identified several biological sources of variation. An in-depth analysis of the 175 genes with the greatest variation among 133 lung tissue samples identified five distinct clusters of highly correlated genes. One large cluster included surfactant genes (SFTPA1, SFTPA2, and SFTPC), which are expressed exclusively in type II pneumocytes, cells that pr

SUBMITTER: McCall MN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5011060 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature