Fig. 3.

Plots comparing bulk and averaged scRNA-seq profiles that demonstrate evidence of more zeros in in scRNA-seq data for low expressed genes than what is expected. Data was obtained from three publicly available scRNA-seq studies that included a matched bulk RNA-seq sample measured on the same population of cells (Shalek and others, 2013; Wu and others, 2014; Trapnell and others, 2014). The red triangles are averages of the single-cell profiles computed in strata defined by the bulk RNA-seq values. The black solid line is what we expect if there is no bias.