Improving RNA-Seq Precision with MapAl

With currently available RNA-Seq pipelines, expression estimates for most genes are very noisy. We here introduce MapAl, a tool for RNA-Seq expression profiling that builds on the established programs Bowtie and Cufflinks. In the post-processing of RNA-Seq reads, it incorporates gene models already at the stage of read alignment, increasing the number of reliably measured known transcripts consistently by 50%. Adding genes identified de novo then allows a reliable assessment of double the total number of transcripts compared to other available pipelines. This substantial improvement is of general relevance: Measurement precision determines the power of any analysis to reliably identify significant signals, such as in screens for differential expression, independent of whether the experimental design incorporates replicates or not.