Modelling group heteroscedasticity in single-cellRNA-seq pseudo-bulk data

Abstract

Group heteroscedasticity is commonly observed in pseudo-bulk single-cell RNA-seq datasets and when not modelled appro-priately, its presence can hamper the detection of differentially expressed genes. Most bulk RNA-seq methods assume equal group variances which will under- and/or over-estimate the true variability in such datasets. We present two methods that account for heteroscedastic groups, namely voomByGroup and voomWithQualityWeights using a blocked design (voomQWB). Compared to current gold standard methods that do not account for heteroscedasticity, we show results from simulation studies and various experiments that demonstrate the superior performance of both voomByGroup and voomQWB in error control and power when group variances in pseudo-bulk scRNA-seq data are unequal. We recommend the use of either of these methods over established approaches, with voomByGroup having the advantage of accurate variance estimation since group variance trends can take on different "shapes", whilst voomQWB has the advantage of catering to complex study designs.