Polee

RNA-Seq analysis using approximate likelihood. Polee is an alternative methodology for the analysis of RNA-Seq data. A lot of RNA-Seq analyses do not consider the full likelihood, but instead take a two-step approach of first estimating transcript or gene expression then treating those estimates as observations in subsequent analysis. This is more efficient than a full probabilistic model encompassing all the reads in the experiment, but does not fully account for uncertainty. To overcome this shortcoming Polee makes a compact and efficient approximation of the likelihood function, and substitutes it in place of the real thing. The end result is more accurate analysis of RNA-Seq (e.g., differential expression) while remaining tractable on inexpensive computers.