MetaDiff: differential isoform expression analysis using random-effects meta-regression

摘要

BackgroundRNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) allows an unbiased survey of the entire transcriptome in a high-throughput manner. A major application of RNA-Seq is to detect differential isoform expression across experimental conditions, which is of great biological interest due to its direct relevance to protein function and disease pathogenesis. Detection of differential isoform expression is challenging because of uncertainty in isoform expression estimation owing to ambiguous reads and variability in precision of the estimates across samples. It is desirable to have a method that can account for these issues and is flexible enough to allow adjustment for covariates.