scBubbletree: quantitative visualization of single cell RNA-seq data

Abstract

MotivationVisualization approaches transform high-dimensional data from single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) experiments into two-dimensional plots that are used for analysis of cell relationships, and as a means of reporting biological insights. Yet, many standard approaches generate visuals that suffer from overplotting, lack of quantitative information, and distort global and local properties of biological patterns relative to the original high-dimensional space. ResultsWe present scBubbletree, a new, scalable method for visualization of scRNA-seq data. The method identifies clusters of cells of similar transcriptomes and visualizes such clusters as "bubbles" at the tips of dendrograms (bubble trees), corresponding to quantitative summaries of cluster properties and relationships. scBubbletree stacks bubble trees with further cluster-associated information in a visually easily accessible way, thus facilitating quantitative assessment and biological interpretation of scRNA-seq data. Availability and Implementationthe R package scBubbletree is freely available at: https://bioconductor.org/packages/scBubbletree/ Contactsimo.kitanovski@uni-due.de, daniel.hoffmann@uni-due.de