Interactive Alternative Splicing Analysis of Human Stem Cells Using psichomics

Alternative splicing (AS) generates functionally distinct transcripts and is involved in multiple cellular processes, including stem cell differentiation. Several epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition-related splicing factors have also been associated with pluripotency. Concomitantly with the interest in studying AS in stem cell biology, the advent of next-generation sequencing of RNA (RNA-seq) has increased the public availability of transcriptomic data and enabled genome-wide AS studies. To facilitate performing such analyses in large publicly available or user-provided transcriptomics datasets, the psichomics R package provides an easy-to-use interface and efficient data visualization tools for AS quantification and integrative analyses of AS and gene expression data.psichomics is employed herein to study AS changes between human stem cells and fibroblasts, based on dimensionality reduction, and median- and variance-based differential AS and gene expression analyses. Putative RNA-binding protein regulators involved in those alterations are then identified based on correlation analyses in large cohorts of human tissue transcriptomes. We identified several alterations, both novel and previously reported, in alternative splicing events and in the expression of their candidate regulators that are associated with stem cell differentiation into fibroblasts.