PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Daniel Schwabe
AU  - Martin Falcke
TI  - On the relation between input and output distributions of scRNA-seq experiments
AID  - 10.1101/2021.10.08.463628
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.10.08.463628
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/09/2021.10.08.463628.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/09/2021.10.08.463628.full
AB  - Motivation Single-cell RNA sequencing determines RNA copy numbers per cell for a given gene. However, technical noise poses the question how observed distributions (output) are connected to their cellular distributions (input).Results We model a single-cell RNA sequencing setup consisting of PCR amplification and sequencing, and derive probability distribution functions for the output distribution given an input distribution. We provide copy number distributions arising from single transcripts during PCR amplification with exact expressions for mean and variance. We prove that the coefficient of variation of the output of sequencing is always larger than that of the input distribution. Experimental data reveals the variance and mean of the input distribution to obey characteristic relations, which we specifically determine for a HeLa data set. We can calculate as many moments of the input distribution as are known of the output distribution (up to all). This, in principle, completely determines the input from the output distribution.Contact martin.falcke{at}mdc-berlin.deCompeting Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.