Original title: Detecting Rhythmic Gene Expression in Single Cell Transcriptomics
Authors: Bingxian Xu,Rosemary Braun
In this article, the authors discuss the importance of understanding the genes that are under circadian control in multicellular organisms. They explain that a circadian rhythm, which is a daily cycle of gene expression, is present in nearly every cell and plays a vital role in coordinating physiological processes. They highlight the potential of transcriptomic profiling at the single-cell level to provide insights into the function of cell-level clocks. However, they note that current detection algorithms for circadian genes are designed for bulk transcriptomic data and may not be suitable for single-cell RNAseq data. To address this, the authors benchmark different circadian detection methods and propose a subsampling procedure combined with harmonic regression as a more efficient and reliable strategy for detecting circadian genes in the single-cell setting. The results of their study provide valuable guidance for adapting existing methods to analyze single-cell data and improve rhythm detection.
Original article: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.07.570691v1