Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31500660›Full record

ArticleGenome biology2019

A comparison of automatic cell identification methods for single-cell RNA sequencing data.

Tamim Abdelaal, Lieke Michielsen, Davy Cats, Dylan Hoogduin, Hailiang Mei, Marcel J T Reinders, Ahmed Mahfouz

Abstract readComparative StudyEvaluation Study
In one paragraph

Article in Genome biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 338 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
338citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

338 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

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278 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Tamim AbdelaalLeiden Computational Biology Center, Leiden University Medical Center, Einthovenweg 20, 2333 ZC, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Lieke MichielsenLeiden Computational Biology Center, Leiden University Medical Center, Einthovenweg 20, 2333 ZC, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Davy CatsSequencing Analysis Support Core, Department of Biomedical Data Sciences, Leiden University Medical Center, Einthovenweg 20, 2333 ZC, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Dylan HoogduinSequencing Analysis Support Core, Department of Biomedical Data Sciences, Leiden University Medical Center, Einthovenweg 20, 2333 ZC, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Hailiang MeiSequencing Analysis Support Core, Department of Biomedical Data Sciences, Leiden University Medical Center, Einthovenweg 20, 2333 ZC, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Marcel J T ReindersLeiden Computational Biology Center, Leiden University Medical Center, Einthovenweg 20, 2333 ZC, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Ahmed MahfouzLeiden Computational Biology Center, Leiden University Medical Center, Einthovenweg 20, 2333 ZC, Leiden, The Netherlands. a.mahfouz@lumc.nl.ORCID 0000-0001-8601-2149

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundSingle-cell transcriptomics is rapidly advancing our understanding of the cellular composition of complex tissues and organisms. A major limitation in most analysis pipelines is the reliance on manual annotations to determine cell identities, which are time-consuming and irreproducible. The exponential growth in the number of cells and samples has prompted the adaptation and development of supervised classification methods for automatic cell identification.

resultsHere, we benchmarked 22 classification methods that automatically assign cell identities including single-cell-specific and general-purpose classifiers. The performance of the methods is evaluated using 27 publicly available single-cell RNA sequencing datasets of different sizes, technologies, species, and levels of complexity. We use 2 experimental setups to evaluate the performance of each method for within dataset predictions (intra-dataset) and across datasets (inter-dataset) based on accuracy, percentage of unclassified cells, and computation time. We further evaluate the methods' sensitivity to the input features, number of cells per population, and their performance across different annotation levels and datasets. We find that most classifiers perform well on a variety of datasets with decreased accuracy for complex datasets with overlapping classes or deep annotations. The general-purpose support vector machine classifier has overall the best performance across the different experiments.

conclusionsWe present a comprehensive evaluation of automatic cell identification methods for single-cell RNA sequencing data. All the code used for the evaluation is available on GitHub ( https://github.com/tabdelaal/scRNAseq_Benchmark ). Additionally, we provide a Snakemake workflow to facilitate the benchmarking and to support the extension of new methods and new datasets.

Indexed as

Gene Expression ProfilingSequence Analysis, RNASingle-Cell AnalysisSupport Vector MachineBenchmarkCell identityClassificationscRNA-seq

Identifiers

PMID31500660
PMCPMC6734286

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.