Digital gene expression analysis without any replicates

[taoxiang180]

Hi, everyone.
Working without any replicates,I am now doing the differential expression analysis, but, the results was not satisfactory at all. I am a novice to bioinformatics and statistics, so, it is really a miserable work.
Which is the better method or software to analyze differential expression without any replicates? And which one did you choose to do this work?
Any pointers will be appreciated.
Thanks!

[masterpiece]

Hi Tioxiang,

I'm new in this area too looking for the same answer, but maybe I can share with you something. Hopefully we can get somewhere.

DESeq claim can be used to do DE, without any replicate. Below is the link to the paper

http://genomebiology.com/2010/11/10/R106

Quoted from the paper

"Working without replicates

DESeq allows analysis of experiments with no biological replicates in one or even both of the conditions. While one may not want to draw strong conclusions from such an analysis, it may still be useful for exploration and hypothesis generation."

I'm also wonder, if replicate is important? because I've been told that with deep coverage sequencing can answer DE exploration, therefore replicate is not a must. Hope somebody from statistic background can explain.

[kopi-o]

Make no mistake, replicates are important. If your sample preparation wasn't good (for example), no amount of sequencing will help.

And of course, more replicates leads to increased statistical power.