I am analysing an RNA-seq dataset with the below given design in DESeq2
| Sample-- | CellLine-- | Treatment |
|---|---|---|
| S1 | C1 | DMSO |
| S2 | C1 | DMSO |
| S3 | C1 | Drug |
| S4 | C1 | Drug |
| S5 | C2 | DMSO |
| S6 | C2 | DMSO |
| S7 | C2 | Drug |
| S8 | C2 | Drug |
While it was fairly straightforward to get results for Drug vs DMSO within cell lines. I also need to look into the effect of drug common across both the cell lines. I can see two ways of doing this:-
- Take the intersection of up and down regulated genes from the individual Drug vs DMSO comparisons
- Use my design as
~CellLine + Treatmentand then extract results for Drug vs DMSO. This should in theory give me genes that are significantly up/down across both the cell lines.
The approach [2] should be more sensitive. However taking a look at plotCounts for some of the top significant genes quite a few genes seems to come up with ~similar counts in one of the cell lines and a significant change in the other. Albeit this happens mostly when counts are low in all samples but still this doesn't seem intuitive. Is this a correct way to get the results or should I stick to approach [1]
