Assessment of microRNA differential expression and detection in multiplexed small RNA sequencing data

Abstract

0.97). When detecting differential microRNA expression between groups of samples, microRNAs with average expression >1 reads per million (RPM) had reproducible fold change estimates (signal to noise) independent of the degree of multiplexing. The number of microRNAs detected was strongly correlated with the log2 number of reads aligning to microRNA loci (R = 0.96). However, most additional microRNAs detected in samples with greater sequencing depth were in the range of expression which had lower fold change reproducibility. These findings elucidate the trade-off between increasing the number of samples in a multiplex with decreasing sequencing depth and will aid in the design of large-scale clinical studies exploring microRNA expression and its role in disease.