RESEARCH ARTICLE Exploring the single-cell RNA-seq analysis landscape with the scRNA-tools database Luke Zappia1,2, Belinda Phipson1, Alicia Oshlack1,2* 1 Bioinformatics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 School of Biosciences, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia *
[email protected] a1111111111 Abstract a1111111111 a1111111111 As single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) datasets have become more widespread a1111111111 the number of tools designed to analyse these data has dramatically increased. Navigat- a1111111111 ing the vast sea of tools now available is becoming increasingly challenging for research- ers. In order to better facilitate selection of appropriate analysis tools we have created the scRNA-tools database (www.scRNA-tools.org) to catalogue and curate analysis tools as they become available. Our database collects a range of information on each OPEN ACCESS scRNA-seq analysis tool and categorises them according to the analysis tasks they per- Citation: Zappia L, Phipson B, Oshlack A (2018) form. Exploration of this database gives insights into the areas of rapid development of Exploring the single-cell RNA-seq analysis analysis methods for scRNA-seq data. We see that many tools perform tasks specific to landscape with the scRNA-tools database. PLoS scRNA-seq analysis, particularly clustering and ordering of cells. We also find that the Comput Biol 14(6): e1006245. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006245 scRNA-seq community embraces an open-source and open-science approach, with most tools available under open-source licenses and preprints being extensively used as Editor: Dina Schneidman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ISRAEL a means to describe methods.