In a screening experiment, genes are transduced into cells to determine their effects. Transduced cells can burst, spilling their contents into the surrounding media. As a result, sequenced droplets can contain RNA-sequences from other cells, complicating efforts to identify transduced factors. This paper develops a systematic approach to this problem by (1) deriving an exact form for the distribution of observed noise counts assuming that they are the result of cells bursting and mixing through a large volume, and (2) applying this distribution to label cells with their transduced genes. Experiments support that all exogenous genes can be described by a single noise model with shared parameters. The labeled cells can then be translated into better understanding of genes' effects on cell type and function.

翻译：在筛选实验中，基因被转导到细胞中以确定其效应。转导细胞可能破裂，将其内含物释放到周围培养基中。因此，被测序的液滴可能包含来自其他细胞的RNA序列，从而干扰转导因子的识别工作。本文针对该问题提出系统化方法：(1) 推导出观测噪声计数的精确分布形式，假设噪声源于细胞破裂后内含物在大体积中混合；(2) 应用该分布对细胞进行转导基因标记。实验结果表明，所有外源基因均可通过单一含共享参数的噪声模型进行描述。标记后的细胞可进一步用于深入理解基因对细胞类型与功能的影响。