Robust and annotation-free analysis of alternative splicing across diverse cell types in mice.

Abstract

Although alternative splicing is a fundamental and pervasive aspect of gene expression in higher eukaryotes, it is often omitted from single-cell studies due to quantification challenges inherent to commonly used short-read sequencing technologies. Here, we undertake the analysis of alternative splicing across numerous diverse murine cell types from two large-scale single-cell datasets-the <i>Tabula Muris</i> and BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network-while accounting for understudied technical artifacts and unannotated events. We find strong and general cell-type-specific alternative splicing, complementary to total gene expression but of similar discriminatory value, and identify a large volume of novel splicing events. We specifically highlight splicing variation across different cell types in primary motor cortex neurons, bone marrow B cells, and various epithelial cells, and we show that the implicated transcripts include many genes which do not display total expression differences. To elucidate the regulation of alternative splicing, we build a custom predictive model based on splicing factor activity, recovering several known interactions while generating new hypotheses, including potential regulatory roles for novel alternative splicing events in critical genes like <i>Khdrbs3</i> and <i>Rbfox1</i>. We make our results available using public interactive browsers to spur further exploration by the community.