LIQA: long-read isoform quantification and analysis

Abstract

Long-read RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) technologies can sequence full-length transcripts, facilitating the exploration of isoform-specific gene expression over short-read RNA-seq. We present LIQA to quantify isoform expression and detect differential alternative splicing (DAS) events using long-read direct mRNA sequencing or cDNA sequencing data. LIQA incorporates base pair quality score and isoform-specific read length information in a survival model to assign different weights across reads, and uses an expectation-maximization algorithm for parameter estimation. We apply LIQA to long-read RNA-seq data from the Universal Human Reference, acute myeloid leukemia, and esophageal squamous epithelial cells and demonstrate its high accuracy in profiling alternative splicing events.