mRIN for direct assessment of genome-wide and gene-specific mRNA integrity from large-scale RNA-sequencing data

摘要: The volume of RNA-Seq data sets in public repositories has been expanding exponentially, providing unprecedented opportunities to study gene expression regulation. Because degraded RNA samples, such as those collected from post-mortem tissues, can result distinct profiles with potential biases, a particularly important step mining these is quality control. Here we develop method named mRIN directly assess mRNA integrity at the sample and individual level. We systematically analyse large-scale human brain transcriptome generated by different consortia. Our analysis demonstrates that 3' bias resulting partial fragmentation tissues marked impact on global profiles, effectively identifies samples levels degradation. Unexpectedly, this process reproducible gene-specific component, transcripts stabilities are associated functions structural features reminiscent decay living cells.