inferPolyASites: Infer polyA sites from droplet sequencing data

In TAPseq: Targeted scRNA-seq primer design for TAP-seq

Description

Infer polyA sites from 10X, Drop-seq or similar 3' enriched sequencing data. Simple function that looks for peaks in read coverage to estimate potential polyA sites. Default parameters are chosen because they work reasonably well with the example data, but they should typically be empirically selected by verifying the output.

Usage

inferPolyASites(
  genes,
  bam,
  polyA_downstream = 100,
  min_cvrg = 0,
  wdsize = 200,
  by = 1,
  extend_downstream = 0,
  perc_threshold = 0.9,
  parallel = FALSE
)

Arguments

genes	GRangesList object containing annotations of genes for which polyA sites are to be estimated.
bam	Path to .bam file containing aligned reads used for polyA site estimation.
polyA_downstream	(numeric) How far downstream of a peak in coverage are polyA sites expected? Somewhat depends on input DNA fragment size. (default: 100).
min_cvrg	(numeric) Minimal coverage for peaks to be considered for polyA site estimation (default: 0).
wdsize	(numeric) Window size to estimate sequencing coverage along transcripts (default: 200).
by	(numeric) Steps in basepairs in which the sliding window should be moved along transcripts to estimate smooth coverage (default: 1).
extend_downstream	(numeric) To which amount should transcript annotations be extended downstream when estimating polyA sites (default: 0). A reasonable value (e.g. 100-200 bp) allows to account for polyA sites that fall a few basepairs downstream of terminal exons.
perc_threshold	(numeric) Only sequencing coverage peaks within perc_threshold percentile of coverage are considered for polyA site estimation (default: 0.9). Avoids that small peaks that in coverage are considered, resulting in manby false polyA sites.
parallel	(logical) Triggers parallel computing using the BiocParallel-package package. This requires that a parallel back-end was registered prior to executing the function. (default: FALSE).

Value

A GRanges object containing coordinates of estimated polyadenylation sites.

Examples

library(GenomicRanges)

# protein-coding exons of genes within chr11 region
data("chr11_genes")
target_genes <- split(chr11_genes, f = chr11_genes$gene_name)

# subset of target genes for quick example
target_genes <- target_genes[18:27]

# bam file containing aligned Drop-seq reads
dropseq_bam <- system.file("extdata", "chr11_k562_dropseq.bam", package = "TAPseq")

# infer polyA sites for all target genes with adjusted parameters. parameter values depend on the
# input data and at this stage it's best to try different settings and check the results
polyA_sites <- inferPolyASites(target_genes, bam = dropseq_bam, polyA_downstream = 50,
                               wdsize = 100, min_cvrg = 1, parallel = TRUE)

TAPseq documentation built on Nov. 8, 2020, 7:51 p.m.