Elimination of PCR duplicates in RNA-seq and small RNA-seq using unique molecular identifiers.

Using simulated and real datasets, we demonstrate that our methods increase the reproducibility of RNA-seq and small RNA-seq data. Notably, we find that the amount of starting material and sequencing depth, but not the number of PCR cycles, determine PCR duplicate frequency. Finally, we show that computational removal of PCR duplicates based only on their mapping coordinates introduces substantial bias into data analysis.