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Single-cell mRNA sequencing can uncover novel cell-to-cell heterogeneity in gene expression levels in seemingly homogeneous populations of cells. However, these experiments are prone to high levels of technical noise, creating new challenges for identifying genes that show genuine heterogeneous expression within the population of cells under study. BASiCS (Bayesian Analysis of Single-Cell Sequencing data) is an integrated Bayesian hierarchical model to perform statistical analyses of single-cell RNA sequencing datasets in the context of supervised experiments (where the groups of cells of interest are known a priori, e.g. experimental conditions or cell types). BASiCS performs built-in data normalisation (global scaling) and technical noise quantification (based on spike-in genes). BASiCS provides an intuitive detection criterion for highly (or lowly) variable genes within a single group of cells. Additionally, BASiCS can compare gene expression patterns between two or more pre-specified groups of cells. Unlike traditional differential expression tools, BASiCS quantifies changes in expression that lie beyond comparisons of means, also allowing the study of changes in cell-to-cell heterogeneity. The latter can be quantified via a biological over-dispersion parameter that measures the excess of variability that is observed with respect to Poisson sampling noise, after normalisation and technical noise removal. Due to the strong mean/over-dispersion confounding that is typically observed for scRNA-seq datasets, BASiCS also tests for changes in residual over-dispersion, defined by residual values with respect to a global mean/over-dispersion trend.

HybridExpress can be used to perform comparative transcriptomics analysis of hybrids (or allopolyploids) relative to their progenitor species. The package features functions to perform exploratory analyses of sample grouping, identify differentially expressed genes in hybrids relative to their progenitors, classify genes in expression categories (N = 12) and classes (N = 5), and perform functional analyses. We also provide users with graphical functions for the seamless creation of publication-ready figures that are commonly used in the literature.

slalom is a scalable modelling framework for single-cell RNA-seq data that uses gene set annotations to dissect single-cell transcriptome heterogeneity, thereby allowing to identify biological drivers of cell-to-cell variability and model confounding factors. The method uses Bayesian factor analysis with a latent variable model to identify active pathways (selected by the user, e.g. KEGG pathways) that explain variation in a single-cell RNA-seq dataset. This an R/C++ implementation of the f-scLVM Python package. See the publication describing the method at https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-017-1334-8.

Quantify and interpret multiple sources of biological and technical variation in gene expression experiments. Uses a linear mixed model to quantify variation in gene expression attributable to individual, tissue, time point, or technical variables. Includes dream differential expression analysis for repeated measures.

bambu is a R package for multi-sample transcript discovery and quantification using long read RNA-Seq data. You can use bambu after read alignment to obtain expression estimates for known and novel transcripts and genes. The output from bambu can directly be used for visualisation and downstream analysis such as differential gene expression or transcript usage.

Splatter is a package for the simulation of single-cell RNA sequencing count data. It provides a simple interface for creating complex simulations that are reproducible and well-documented. Parameters can be estimated from real data and functions are provided for comparing real and simulated datasets.