Biological and technical spatial variation in spatial transcriptomics

Abstract

Spatial transcriptomics technologies enable the identification of spatially variable genes that can shed light on tissue structure and function. However, spatial variability of gene expression can be due not only to biological function but also technical artifact. We develop a model for spatially variable capture that forms part of a bursty transcription model, allowing us to distinguish biological variability from spatially variable technical noise. Our approach is implemented in a program called stipple, which we demonstrate can be useful for identifying and interpreting spatial gene expression variation from spatial transcriptomics assays.