Scotty: a web tool for designing RNA-Seq experiments to measure differential gene expression

A common question arises at the beginning of every experiment where RNA-Seq is used to detect differential gene expression between two conditions: How many reads should we sequence? Scotty is an interactive web-based application that assists biologists to design an experiment with an appropriate sample size and read depth to satisfy the user-defined experimental objectives. This design can be based on data available from either pilot samples or publicly available datasets. Scotty can be freely accessed on the web at http://euler.bc.edu/marthlab/scotty/scotty.php