SuperTranscript: a reference for analysis and visualization of the transcriptome

Transcriptomes are tremendously diverse and highly dynamic; visualizing and analysing this complexity is a major challenge. Here we present superTranscript, a single linear representation for each gene. SuperTranscripts contain all unique exonic sequence, built from any combination of transcripts, including reference assemblies, de novo assemblies and long-read sequencing. Our approach enables visualization of transcript structure and provides increased power to detect differential isoform usage.