siqRNA-seq is a spike-in-independent technique for quantitative mapping of mRNA landscape

Normalization of RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data for gene expression comparison is essential to ensure accurate gene expression quantification. It has been argued that samples with large differences in global expression level cannot be properly normalized without spike-in control RNAs, however, spike-in controls are expensive and not yet widely used. Here, we presented a spike-in independent quantitative RNA sequencing (siqRNA-seq) method, which uses reads from genome DNA as an internal reference to quantify gene expression level. We showed that siqRNA-seq profiles gene expression as traditional RNA-seq, but allows to identify different expression genes between samples with distinct mRNA content. We also showed siqRNA-seq enable us to assess the copy number of mRNA per cell without counting cells and adding spike-ins. Thus, siqRNA-seq provides a convenient and versatile means to quantitatively profile the mRNA landscape in cells.