  High-throughput transcriptomics experiments have reached the stage where the
count of the number of reads alignable to a given position can be treated as an
almost-continuous signal. This allows to ask questions of
biophysical/biotechnical nature, but which may still have biological
implications. Here we show that when sequencing RNA fragments from one end, as
it is the case on most platforms, an oscillation in the read count is observed
at the other end. We further show that these oscillations can be well described
by Kolmogorov's 1941 broken stick model. We investigate how the model can be
used to improve predictions of gene ends (3' transcript ends) but conclude that
with present data the improvement is only marginal. The results highlight
subtle effects in high-throughput transcriptomics experiments which do not have
a biological origin, but which may still be used to obtain biological
information.
