bulk-rnaseq

An end-to-end workflow for bulk RNA sequencing, which measures gene activity across a sample rather than one cell at a time. It processes raw FASTQ sequencing files through quality checks, read alignment or quantification, gene counts, differential-expression testing, and pathway analysis.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to turn sequencing reads into a gene-count table, identify genes whose activity differs between conditions, find affected biological pathways, and create analysis figures.
Why use it?
It connects the separate analysis stages and applies quality, reproducibility, and statistical checks before reporting results. This reduces errors from skipped quality control or unsuitable experimental designs.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/k-dense-ai/scientific-agent-skills/bulk-rnaseq
Any agent
npx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills --skill bulk-rnaseq
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 218 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,749 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00218 $0.03749
Opus 5 $0.00109 $0.01875
Sonnet 5 $0.00044 $0.00750
Haiku 4.5 $0.00022 $0.00375

Measured yesterday against content hash b39c5999e482, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

bulk-rnaseq scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/build_counts_matrix.py, scripts/validate_samplesheet.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/bulk-rnaseq/SKILL.md · 199 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 199 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Bulk RNA-seq

Overview

This skill orchestrates a complete, defensible bulk RNA-seq differential-expression study, from raw sequencing reads to enriched pathways and figures. It is a router, not a reimplementation: most stages already have dedicated skills in this repo, and this skill connects them in the right order, fills the one real gap (raw reads → a gene-level counts matrix), and enforces the design and QC decisions that determine whether the final result is trustworthy.

"Defensible" means three things, applied throughout:

  • Reproducible — pinned pipeline/tool versions, containers where possible, recorded parameters, fixed random seeds.
  • Quality-gated — QC is inspected and acted on before, during, and after quantification, not skipped.
  • Statistically sound — adequate replication, a design that matches the biology, counts handled correctly, and FDR-controlled testing.

The pipeline is: FastQC/trim → align/quant (STAR/Salmon) → counts → DE (pydeseq2) → enrichment (pathway-enrichment) → figures.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when the user wants to:

  • Go from FASTQ files (or a sequencing run) to differentially expressed genes and pathways.
  • Run or configure nf-core/rnaseq, or align/quantify with STAR, Salmon, or featureCounts.
  • Turn Salmon/STAR/featureCounts output into a counts matrix ready for DESeq2/PyDESeq2.
  • Design or sanity-check a bulk RNA-seq experiment (replicates, batch, strandedness) before committing compute.
  • Scope an end-to-end RNA-seq analysis and decide which tools and skills to chain.

This is bulk RNA-seq (samples = biological specimens). For single-cell/nuclei data use scanpy; for the DE statistics alone use pydeseq2; for enrichment alone use pathway-enrichment.

The Pipeline at a Glance

flowchart TD
    fastq["Raw FASTQ + samplesheet"] --> qc["FastQC + MultiQC"]
    qc --> trim["Trim: fastp / Trim Galore"]
    trim --> align["Align + quant: STAR and/or Salmon"]
    align --> counts["Gene-level counts matrix"]
    counts --> de["Differential expression"]
    de --> enrich["Pathway / GSEA enrichment"]
    de --> fig["Figures"]
    enrich --> fig
    nfcore["nf-core/rnaseq via nextflow skill"] -.->|"path A"| align
    manual["Standalone recipes (this skill)"] -.->|"path B"| align
    bridge["build_counts_matrix.py (this skill)"] -.-> counts
    pydeseq2skill["pydeseq2 skill"] -.-> de
    pwskill["pathway-enrichment skill"] -.-> enrich
    vizskill["scientific-visualization skill"] -.-> fig

Read the full file on GitHub · 199 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 199 lines · 218 tokens per session scan A b39c5999e482

Subscribe to this mod's changes

bulk-rnaseq is a skill published in the GitHub repository K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills (40,390 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 218 tokens to every session and 3,749 once invoked, about $0.0011 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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