Quality control of single-cell RNA-seq by SinQC.

Abstract

Single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) is emerging as a promising technology for profiling cell-to-cell variability in cell populations. However, the combination of technical noise and intrinsic biological variability makes detecting technical artifacts in scRNA-seq samples particularly challenging. Proper detection of technical artifacts is critical to prevent spurious results during downstream analysis. In this study, we present 'Single-cell RNA-seq Quality Control' (SinQC), a method and software tool to detect technical artifacts in scRNA-seq samples by integrating both gene expression patterns and data quality information. We apply SinQC to nine different scRNA-seq datasets, and show that SinQC is a useful tool for controlling scRNA-seq data quality. SinQC software and documents are available at http://www.morgridge.net/SinQC.html : PJiang@morgridge.org or RStewart@morgridge.org Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.