Modeling zero inflation is not necessary for spatial transcriptomics.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Spatial transcriptomics are a set of new technologies that profile gene expression on tissues with spatial localization information. With technological advances, recent spatial transcriptomics data are often in the form of sparse counts with an excessive amount of zero values.

Results

We perform a comprehensive analysis on 20 spatial transcriptomics datasets collected from 11 distinct technologies to characterize the distributional properties of the expression count data and understand the statistical nature of the zero values. Across datasets, we show that a substantial fraction of genes displays overdispersion and/or zero inflation that cannot be accounted for by a Poisson model, with genes displaying overdispersion substantially overlapped with genes displaying

SUBMITTER: Zhao P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9116027 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature