FINDER OF RARE ENTITIES (FiRE)

About:

• The algorithm — Finder of Rare Entities (FiRE) — assigns a rareness score to each cell that is computed based on the gene expression profile of about twenty thousand genes.
  
  
• Cells having scores above a certain threshold are reported as rare cells. Circulating tumour cells, cancer stem cells, antigen-specific T cells are a few examples of rare cells.
  
  
• Significance:
  • It can find rare cells from a very large pool of cells in a matter of seconds.
    
    
  • Besides being fast, the new algorithm has superior sensitivity and specificity compared with existing methods.