miRNA with UMI - any papers showing this improves accuracy?

Question

[Richard]

Hi Folks,

It makes sens to me that using UMIs in miRNA-Seq would allow a user to get more accurate estimates of miRNA expression given how the inserts are really short and PCR is involved.

Although I'm finding a number of software packages supporting the analysis of data containing UMI, I'm not finding any papers that show results comparing with-and-without UMI miRNA results with an evaluation of accuracy.

Perhaps I'm missing a paper, (please let me know if that is the case), but if there isn't one, are people all in for UMI use in miRNA, or are there reasons beyond extra analysis steps that suggest results are better without the use of UMIs?

[goodez]

Without digging through literature, I can tell you I've seen papers showing that UMIs improve accuracy when you want to deduplicate reads in order to see real differences in expression. Otherwise you can't be sure in your analysis if duplicates are real, or just an artifact of PCR amplification. Sorry that I didn't provide a paper but hope it helps.

[Rituriya]

I agree with Richard. Even I am struggling to find papers talking with and without UMI-based miRNA results. I am getting papers which mostly talk about how single cell RNA-seq can be benefitted with UMI. Any links would help. Thanks, Rituriya.

Answer 1

[Rituriya]

Finally I found one research article just after posted the comment. Here it is. UMI by QIAseq method indeed looks promising when compared to the existing methods.