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Calculating tissue specificity index (tau)

TM Tarang K. Mehta
CK Christopher Koch
WN Will Nash
SK Sara A. Knaack
PS Padhmanand Sudhakar
MO Marton Olbei
SB Sarah Bastkowski
LP Luca Penso-Dolfin
TK Tamas Korcsmaros
WH Wilfried Haerty
SR Sushmita Roy
FD Federica Di-Palma
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As a measure for tissue specificity of gene expression, we calculated τ (Tau) [75] using log-transformed and normalized gene expression data (as inputted to run Arboretum):

Here, n is the number of tissues and xi is the expression profile component normalized by the maximal component value [75]. The values of tau vary from 0 to 1: ubiquitous or broad expr (τ ≤ 0.5); intermediate expr (0.5 < τ < 0.9); and tissue-specific or narrow expr (τ ≥ 0.9) [75]. Amongst existing methods, τ has been shown to be a reliable method for calculating tissue specificity [76]. Testes normally express far more genes than any other tissue, generally displaying a tissue-specific pattern of expression. As tau was used to assess genome-wide expression levels across all tissues, but between species, testis expression data was included for each species to obtain a true representation of variation in transcriptional programs.

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