Figure 1

Experimental design and computational approach to calculate the contributions of sampling effects to single cell microarray data. A. Generation of experimental microarray data from single cell RNA split into two equal parts (half-vs-half microarray hybridizations); B. Monte-Carlo simulation of half-vs-half microarray data, based on transcript distributions and estimation of the most likely transcript distributions best fitted to observed microarray data; C, D. Monte-Carlo simulation of cell-vs-cell microarray data based on the most likely model transcript distribution estimated as described above. Generation of experimental microarray data from pairwise comparisons of single neural stem cells RNA samples. Finally, simulated gene expression ratio distributions were compared with experimental microarray data comparing gene expression between pairs of neural stem cells.