Challenges Analyzing RNA-Seq Gene Expression Data

Abstract

The analysis of messenger Ribonucleic acid obtained through sequencing techniques (RNA-sequencing) data is very challenging. Once technical difficulties have been sorted, an important choice has to be made during pre-processing: Two different paths can be chosen: Transform RNA-sequencing count data to a continuous variable or continue to work with count data. For each data type, analysis tools have been developed and seem appropriate at first sight, but a deeper analysis of data distribution and structure, are a discussion worth. In this review, open questions regarding RNA-sequencing data nature are discussed and highlighted, indicating important future research topics in statistics that should be addressed for a better analysis of already available and new appearing gene expression data. Moreover, a comparative analysis of RNAseq count and transformed data is presented. This comparison indicates that transforming RNA-seq count data seems appropriate, at least for differential expression detection.