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Genomics: the state of the art in RNA-seq analysis

Nature Methods volume 10, pages 1165–1166 (2013)Cite this article

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RNA-seq is a recent and immensely popular technology for cataloging and comparing gene expression. Two papers from the international RGASP consortium report on large-scale competitions to identify the best algorithms for RNA-seq analysis, with surprising variability in the results.

As a general rule, all cells of an organism contain the exact same DNA, and it is the expression of different RNAs (or different amounts of RNAs) that determines the identity of a cell. Important questions such as “Why are cancer cells different from normal cells?” can be answered by investigating all of the RNAs of a cell (its transcriptome) using a technique called RNA-seq. In this issue of Nature Methods, two papers from the RNA-seq Genome Annotation Assessment Project (RGASP) consortium evaluate the state of the art in RNA-seq analysis1,2.

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Figure 1

Abigail Yu

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  1. Ian Korf is at the UC Davis Genome Center, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, USA.,

    Ian Korf

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  1. Ian Korf
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Correspondence to Ian Korf.

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Korf, I. Genomics: the state of the art in RNA-seq analysis. Nat Methods 10, 1165–1166 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2735

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