Expression data from pure/mixed brain, liver and lung to test feasability and sensitivity of statistical deconvolution

Tissues are often made up of multiple cell-types. Blood, for example, contains many different cell-types, each with its own functional attributes and molecular signature. In humans, because of its accessibility and immune functionality, blood cells have been used as a source for RNA-based biomarkers for many diseases. Yet, the proportions of any given cell-type in the blood can vary markedly, even between normal individuals. This results in a significant loss of sensitivity in gene expression studies of blood cells and great difficulty in identifying the cellular source of any perturbations. Ideally, one would like to perform differential expression analysis between patient groups for each of the cell-types within a tissue but this is impractical and prohibitively expensive.

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Shen-Orr SS, Tibshirani R, Khatri P, Bodian DL, Staedtler F, Perry NM, Hastie T, Sarwal MM, Davis MM, Butte AJ