SURF: integrative analysis of a compendium of RNA-seq and CLIP-seq datasets highlights complex governing of alternative transcriptional regulation by RNA-binding proteins

Advances in high-throughput profiling of RNA binding proteins (RBPs) have resulted in CLIP-seq datasets coupled with transcriptome profiling by RNA-seq. However, analysis methods that integrate both types of data are lacking. We describe SURF, Statistical Utility for RBP Functions, for integrative analysis of large collections of CLIP-seq and RNA-seq data. We demonstrate SURF’s ability to accurately detect differential alternative transcriptional regulation events and associate them to local protein-RNA interactions. We apply SURF to ENCODE RBP compendium and carry out downstream analysis with additional reference datasets. The results of this application are browsable at http://www.statlab.wisc.edu/shiny/surf/ .