How frequent are sequencing errors and how are they handled?
Background is relatively low in MPSS. Background is essentially the erroneous identification of signatures that are assigned to a particular gene. These may result from errors during the sequencing process that mis-calls a particular base. With the genomic sequence, we can ‘filter’ most of the errors by comparing the signatures and removing those that aren’t found in the genome. If by chance the signature is found in the genome, errors are infrequent enough that mis-identified signatures have a very low abundance. We use a cutoff of ~3-5 TPM to separate low background from signal.
