Introducing Spike-In RNA Variants at “Revolutionizing Next-Generation Sequencing: Tools and Technologies” – January 17, 2015
It was a great pleasure for us to be a Gold Sponsor of “Revolutionizing Next-Generation Sequencing: Tools and Technologies” conference in Leuven, Belgium. This meeting has attracted many current and future users of RNA-Seq from all corners of the world.
Lexogen’s CEO, Dr. Alexander Seitz has introduced a new product Spike-In RNA Variants (SIRVs) during his 30 minutes talk. These are transcript spike-in controls for quantification of mRNA isoforms in RNA-Seq. Transcript spike-in controls such as the ones devised by the External RNA Control Consortium (ERCC) have already been successfully employed in RNA-Seq experiments to assess workflow and platform properties. A limitation of these monocistronic, single-gene transcripts is their lack of complexity. Eukaryotic transcriptomes are characterized by extensive (alternative) splicing, alternative promoter and polyadenylation site usage, overlapping genes and rare events like the formation of fusion genes. This complexity prevents a straight-forward bioinformatics analysis. Accurate gene expression measurements require the reconstitution of transcript variants, which is complicated by incomplete and changing genome annotations and difficulties in sequence assembly. Progress in RNA preparation, library generation, sequencing and upstream bioinformatics algorithms have improved the determination of isoforms and their expression. However, the performance of these methods cannot be assessed adequately without known transcript spike-in controls of representative complexity. Lexogen Spike-In RNA Variants (SIRVs) are addressing this gap and contribute to improvement of mRNA isoforms quantification in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS).
Learn more about SIRVs from the talk video or/and at www.sirvs.org.
