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Bayesian Inference of Cell Composition and Gene Expression Reveals Tumor-Microenvironment Interactions

Chu, T.; Danko, C. G.

2020-01-08 genomics
10.1101/2020.01.07.897900 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Understanding the interactions between cells in their environment is a major challenge in genomics. Here we developed BayesPrism, a Bayesian method to jointly predict cellular composition and gene expression in each cell type, including heterogeneous malignant cells, from bulk RNA-seq using scRNA-seq as prior information. We conducted an integrative analysis of 1,412 bulk RNA-seq samples in primary glioblastoma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma using single-cell datasets of 85 patients. We identified cell types correlated with clinical outcomes and explored spatial heterogeneity in malignant cell states and non-malignant cell type composition. We refined subtypes using gene expression in malignant cells, after excluding confounding non-malignant cell types. Finally, we identified genes whose expression in malignant cells correlated with infiltration of macrophages, T cells, fibroblasts, and endothelial cells across multiple tumor types. Our work introduces a new lens that uses scRNA-seq to accurately infer cellular composition and expression in large cohorts of bulk data.

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