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Bayesian Correlation is a robust similarity measure for single cell RNA-seq data

ABSTRACT: Single-cell analysis of the transcriptome deepens our understanding of an individual cell's contribution to its microenvironment. Using single-cell analysis to study complex biological processes requires state-of-the-art computational tools. Assessing similarity is highly important for bioinformatics algorithms in order to determine correlations between biological information. Similarity can appear by chance, particularly for low expressed entities. This is especially relevant in single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) because the read counts obtained are lower compared to bulk RNA-sequencing and therefore classic bioinformatics tools are insufficient to obtain reproducible results. Recently, a Bayesian correlation scheme, that assigns low correlation values to correlations coming from low expressed genes, has been proposed to assess similarity for bulk RNA-seq and miRNA. This Bayesian method uses a prior distribution before using empirical evidence. Our goal was to extend the properties of this Bayesian correlation scheme to scRNA-seq data. We assessed 3 ways to compute similarity. First, we computed the similarity of each pair of genes over all cells. Second, we identified specific cell populations and computed the correlation in those specific cells. Third, we computed the similarity of each pair of genes over all clusters, by including the total mRNA expression in those cells. To study the effect of the number of cells on the method, we did not rely on simulated data, we generated 4 scRNA-seq mouse liver cell libraries with a varying number of input cells. Results: We show that Bayesian correlations are more reproducible than Pearson correlations in all the scenarios studied. Compared to Pearson correlations, Bayesian correlations have a smaller dependence on the number of input cells. We demonstrate that the Bayesian correlation algorithm assigns high similarity values to genes with a biological relevance in a specific population. Significance: Our results demonstrate that Bayesian correlation is a robust similarity measure for scRNA-seq datasets. The Bayesian method allows researchers to study similarity between pairs of genes without discarding low expressed entities and to minimize biasing the results by fake correlations. Taken together, using our method of Bayesian correlation the reproducibility of scRNA-seq experiments is increased significantly.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE134134 | GEO | 2019/12/31

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Pancreatic cancer is a complex disease with a desmoplastic stroma, extreme hypoxia, and inherent resistance to therapy. Understanding the signaling and adaptive response of such an aggressive cancer is key to making advances in therapeutic efficacy and understanding disease progression. Redox factor-1 (Ref-1), a redox signaling protein, regulates the DNA binding activity of several transcription factors, including HIF-1. The conversion of HIF-1 from an oxidized to reduced state leads to enhancement of its DNA binding. In our previously published work, knockdown of Ref-1 under normoxia resulted in altered gene expression patterns on pathways including EIF2, protein kinase A, and mTOR. In this study, single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and proteomics were used to explore the effects of Ref-1 on metabolic pathways under hypoxia.Results: We also integrated the scRNA data analysis with the proteomic analysis and found that the differentially expressed genes and pathways identified from the scRNA-seq data are highly consistent to the significant proteins observed in the proteomics data, especially for the upregulated cell cycle and transcription pathways and downregulated metabolic, apoptosis and signaling pathways under hypoxia. Conclusion: The scRNA-seq and proteomics data consistently demonstrated down-regulated central metabolism pathways in APE1/Ref-1 knockdown vs scrambled control under both normoxia and hypoxia conditions. Experimental Methods: scRNA-seq comparing pancreatic cancer cells expressing less than 20% of the Ref-1 protein was analyzed using left truncated mixture Gaussian model. Matched samples were also collected for bulk proteomic analysis of the four conditions. scRNA-seq data was validated using proteomics and qRT-PCR. Ref-1’s role in mitochondrial function was confirmed using mitochondrial function assays and qRT-PCR. Results: We also integrated the scRNA data analysis with the proteomic analysis and found that the differentially expressed genes and pathways identified from the scRNA-seq data are highly consistent to the significant proteins observed in the proteomics data, especially for the upregulated cell cycle and transcription pathways and downregulated metabolic, apoptosis and signaling pathways under hypoxia. Conclusion: The scRNA-seq and proteomics data consistently demonstrated down-regulated central metabolism pathways in APE1/Ref-1 knockdown vs scrambled control under both normoxia and hypoxia conditions.

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Bayesian Correlation is a robust similarity measure for single cell RNA-seq data

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