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From noise to models to numbers: Evaluating negative binomial models and parameter estimations in single-cell RNA-seq

Fig 8

Technical-noise-corrected inference in the NB-optimal regime reveals that relative ordering of gene bursting parameters can be robustly recovered.

(a) Scatter plot of the estimated ratio of burst parameters of a pair of genes and of the ground-truth ratio of the burst parameters of the same pair of genes. All parameter sets are sampled from the region of parameter space where the technical-noise-corrected NB distribution is optimally selected using the aeBIC approach (purple regions in Fig C in S1 Text). Points marked as blue are those pairs of genes for which the estimation led to an incorrect ordering of genes by the size of the burst parameter. The order was correctly inferred for gene pairs corresponding to orange and green points. Perfect ratio estimation is shown by the solid red line; gene pairs corresponding to orange (green) points overestimate (underestimate) the distance between the burst parameters of the gene pairs. (b) Distributions of the relative errors in burst frequency and burst size for those pairs of genes for which the order was correctly inferred (orange and green points) in (a). Note that the inference and model selection approach here assumes full knowledge of the distribution of probability capture, an ideal case.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014014.g008