TcGSA
R packageThe TcGSA
(Time-course Gene Set Analysis Hejblum et al., 2015) R
package tests gene expression dynamics for significance in gene sets. A gene set is a group of genes, known a priori to share a common biological function or to be co-expressed. TcGSA
relies on linear mixed model to take into account the potential heterogeneity of expression within a gene set. For more details, check the published article in PLOS Computational Biology.
3 inputs are required to run TcGSA
:
A gene set is a group of genes either sharing the same biological function or . It enables to detect different gene expression and seems to be more powerful than a gene-by-gene analysis. Several definitions of groups have been made, in particular here we will focus on the following:
The gene set object is a gmt
format containing:
One can either use already existing gmt
objects, or build their own.
To import the gmt
s used in Hejblum et al., 2015, one can download the supplementary file by running the following command:
<- tempfile()
temp ::download.file("http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004310.s007", destfile = temp, mode = "wb")
utilsload(unz(temp, "ReproducibleRFiles/GMTs_PLOScb.RData", open = "r"))
unlink(temp)
rm(temp)
It contains the 3 gene sets detailed above (for GO, it is only a subset of mutually exclusive gene sets with biological functions related to the immune system).
Disclaimer: be careful with the version of the gene set databases because they are probably outdated by now. To make sure to have the latest version of the database, you can (re-)build the gmt
object yourself following the method below.
To self-build your gmt
object, you have to prepare a .gmt
file. This file format is the tab delimited file which can be created with this helpful website from the Broad Institute. In this file, one row represents one gene set with:
Next, to import the .gmt
file into R, you need to run the GSA.read.gmt()
function from the GSA
package. More details on the GSA
help package.
This matrix contains the gene expression (in cells) for each gene (in rows) of each sample (in columns) gathered from microarray measurements. The gene expression should already be normalized before using TcGSA
. In the rownames
, the name of each probe/gene must match with the name of probes/genes in the gmt
object.
The design data matrix contains for each sample (in row), several variables (in column). The variables required for the matrix are:
Name of samples should be unique and match with the samples of gene expression matrix with the same order.
This example comes from Hejblum et al., 2015 and DALIA-1 HIV therapeutic vaccine trial. The aim of this study is to evaluate the immune response to HIV vaccine. To conduct this study, 19 patients contaminated by the HIV have been followed for 48 weeks split into 2 phases of 24 each:
Blood samples have been collected at each of the different measurement time points, for each subject, to study the dynamic of gene expression over time. For more details, check the article from Hejblum et al. here.
The data are publicly available on GEO website with GEO access number ‘GSE46734’. We will be using the GEOquery
package to get the data files from GEO website (see appendix for more details on GEOquery
)
In this example, we need import the supplementary files available on GEOwith the getGEOSuppFiles
function (we only need the three following files, hence the regular expression filter: gene expression pre-ATI, gene expression post-ATI, experimental design):
::getGEOSuppFiles('GSE46734', filter_regex="(*NonParamCombat*)|(*DESIGN*)") GEOquery
The design data matrix (called design_preATI
) is extracted from one of the GEO supplementary files. It contains the needed experimental variables, plus some additional information regarding this study. Some data processing is performed made according to the source of this paper.
<- read.delim(gzfile("GSE46734/GSE46734_DALIA1longitudinalTranscriptome_DESIGN_anonym.txt.gz"))
design <- design[-which(design$TimePoint<0 | design$TimePoint==16 | design$TimePoint>22), ]
design_preATI head(design_preATI,5)
#> Sample_name Chip_ID HYB_Chamber HYB_Day Patient_ID TimePoint
#> 1 X6116733008_L C4 CH1 D1 P001 4
#> 3 X6116733022_E C13 CH4 D1 P001 22
#> 5 X6116733029_A C18 CH1 D2 P001 8
#> 6 X6116733068_L C25 CH3 D2 P001 12
#> 8 X6116733073_K C29 CH4 D2 P001 0
This data frame contains 90 samples and 6 experimental variables :
Sample_name
for the name of samplesPatient_ID
for the identification of patientsTimePoint
for the time measurementsChip_ID
HYB_Chamber
HYB_Day
are the variables not required for TcGSA commandsThe gene expression matrix (called expr_preATI
) is extracted from one of the GEO supplementary files (namely the “GSE46734_DALIA1longitudinalTranscriptome_PALO01_PreATI_NEQC_NonParamCombat.txt.gz” file).
NB: The data is already normalized.
<- read.delim(gzfile("GSE46734/GSE46734_DALIA1longitudinalTranscriptome_PALO01_PreATI_NEQC_NonParamCombat.txt.gz"))
expr_preATI rownames(expr_preATI) <- expr_preATI$PROBE_ID
<- expr_preATI[,as.character(design_preATI$Sample_name)]
expr_preATI
1:4,1:4]
expr_preATI[#> X6116733008_L X6116733022_E X6116733029_A X6116733068_L
#> ILMN_1762337 4.967101 4.398911 4.384093 4.927489
#> ILMN_2055271 5.215882 4.744463 5.038972 5.209726
#> ILMN_2383229 4.565933 4.578123 4.696965 4.306206
#> ILMN_1806310 4.402265 4.473504 4.598726 4.589389
We have:
ILMN_xxxxxxx
for each probe identifierXxxxxxxxxxx_X
for the name of each sampleThe entire matrix contains \(32,978\) genes and \(90\) samples (number of samples should be the same as in design data matrix)
identical(ncol(expr_preATI), nrow(design_preATI))
#> [1] TRUE
This function provides the result of likelihood ratio test using the linear mixed model for each gene set. For this example, we use gene sets data from Chaussabel’s modules (Chaussabel et al., 2008). TcGSA.LR
function requires:
expr
: name of the gene expression matrixgmt
: name of the gmt gene set objectdesign
: name of the design data matrixsubject_name
: name of the identification of patients in the design data matrixtime_name
: name of the time measurements in the design data matrix<- TcGSA::TcGSA.LR(expr = expr_preATI,
tcgsa_result gmt = gmt_modulesV2,
design = design_preATI,
subject_name = "Patient_ID",
time_name = "TimePoint")
#> A TcGSA object
#> Form of the time trend:
#> linear
#> Number of treatment groups:
#> 1
#> Number of gene sets tested for significant time trend:
#> 260
Now tcgsa_result
is a tcgsa
object containing, in addition to the likelihood ratio test results:
linear
)To get the number of significant gene sets, one can use summary
function on a tcgsa
object:
summary(tcgsa_result)
#> A TcGSA object
#> Form of the time trend:
#> linear
#> Number of treatment groups:
#> 1
#> Number of gene sets tested for significant time trend:
#> 260
#>
#> Number of significant gene sets at a 5% threshold (BY procedure):
#> 17 out of 260 gene sets
To get more details on the significant gene sets, use the signifLRT.TcGSA()
function. It returns information such as the significant gene sets among all the gene sets tested, along their p-values with adjustment for multiple testing (default option is BY
for Benjamini-Yekutieli correction Benjamini et Yekutieli, 2001 and 5% threshold). Below is an example of five significant gene sets:
head(TcGSA::signifLRT.TcGSA(tcgsa_result)$mixedLRTadjRes)
#> GeneSet AdjPval desc
#> 1 M1.1 8.296095e-09 Platelets
#> 2 M3.2 4.096412e-08 Inflammation
#> 3 M3.5 3.952334e-02 Cell Cycle
#> 6 M4.6 1.337921e-06 Inflammation
#> 7 M4.9 3.820230e-04 Undetermined
#> 4 M4.11 7.411800e-07 Plasma Cells
You can also use the multtest.TcGSA
function to provide the likelihood ratios, the raw and adjusted p-values for the whole gene sets with 5% threshold. Below is an example displaying only for five results:
head(TcGSA::multtest.TcGSA(tcgsa_result))
#> LR CVG_H0 CVG_H1 raw_pval adj_pval
#> 1 48.5951385 0 0 1.559071e-11 8.296095e-09
#> 2 0.4574752 0 0 6.471718e-01 1.000000e+00
#> 3 3.1626395 0 0 1.405224e-01 1.000000e+00
#> 4 1.6726757 0 0 3.145975e-01 1.000000e+00
#> 5 0.1412185 0 0 8.194493e-01 1.000000e+00
#> 6 0.1036336 0 0 8.485074e-01 1.000000e+00
CVG_H0
and CVG_H1
are the convergence of the model under null and alternative hypotheses. 0
indicates a good convergence of the model (based on lme4
output).
plot1GS()
plots the different representations of gene expression in a specific gene set of interest (specified by the geneset.name
argument). This function requires the following:
expr
: either the name of the gene expression matrix or the estimations of linear mixed model (in this example, we used the raw data from the gene expression matrix)gmt
: the name of the gmt gene set objectSubject_ID
: the name of the identification of patients in the design data matrixTimePoint
: the name of the time measurements of the design data matrixgeneset.name
: the name of gene set (significant ones can be found with signifLRT.TcGSA(tcgsa_result)$mixedLRTadjRes
)time_unit
: string to be displayed before to the values of TimePoint
on the x-axis (such as ‘D’ for ‘days’ for instance - optional)::plot1GS(expr = expr_preATI,
TcGSA#plot1GS(expr = tcgsa_result$Estimations,
gmt = gmt_modulesV2,
Subject_ID = design_preATI$Patient_ID,
TimePoint = design_preATI$TimePoint,
clustering = FALSE,
time_unit = "W",
geneset.name = "M3.2",
title="",
margins=0.4,
lab.cex=0.37,
axis.cex=0.37,
line.size=0.45,
gg.add=list(ggplot2::theme(legend.position="none"),
::ylim(-1.26,1.26)
ggplot2 ))
Dotted line shows the median gene expression across subjects, in the gene set over time.
Here we are going to take another example, from Obermoser et al. 2013, to study the responses to influenza and pneumococcal vaccines on healthy individuals using longitudinal gene expression. The subjects are split into three groups of 6 individuals, each receiving either 2009-2010 seasonal influenza vaccine (Fluzone), a 23-valent pneumococcal vaccine (Pneumovax23), or a placebo (saline solution).
Blood samples have been acquired on day -7, 0, 1, 3, 7, 10, 14, 21 and 28 to study gene expression over time. For more details, check the article from Obermoser et al. here.
The data is available on GEO website under the GEO access number ‘GSE30101’, which we will be accessing through the GEOquery
package (see appendix for more details on GEOquery
)
Here, we download the data files and import them with getGEO()
function:
::download.file("ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/series/GSE30nnn/GSE30101/soft/GSE30101_family.soft.gz", destfile = "GSE30101_family.soft.gz", mode = "wb", cacheOK = FALSE)
utils<- GEOquery::getGEO(filename="GSE30101_family.soft.gz") gse.soft
Additional processing is needed to shape our dataset into a gene expression matrix:
<- GEOquery::Table(GEOquery::GSMList(gse.soft)[[1]])$ID
probesIDs <- do.call('cbind', lapply(GEOquery::GSMList(gse.soft),
data.matrix function(x) {
<- GEOquery::Table(x)
tab <- match(probesIDs,tab$ID_REF)
mymatch return(tab$VALUE[mymatch])
}))rownames(data.matrix) <- probesIDs
<- apply(X = data.matrix, MARGIN = 2, FUN = as.numeric)
expr.All.ChaussVac rownames(expr.All.ChaussVac) <- probesIDs
The experimental design data matrix can be extracted with the following commands:
<- lapply(GEOquery::GSMList(gse.soft),
design_list function(x){GEOquery::Meta(x)$characteristics_ch1})
<- data.frame(row.names = names(design_list))
design $sample_ID <- names(design_list)
design<- unlist(lapply(design_list, function(x){gsub("subject id: ", "", x[grep("subject id: ", x)])}))
s_id $Subject_ID <- as.character(paste("P", s_id[design$sample_ID], sep=""))
design
<- unlist(lapply(design_list, function(x){gsub("day: ", "", x[grep("day: ", x)])}))
time which(time %in% c("-7", "0.5", "1", "7", "10", "14", "21", "28"))] <-
time[paste("D", time[which(time %in% c("-7", "0.5", "1", "7", "10", "14", "21", "28"))], sep="")
which(time %in% c("-168", "1.5", "6", "9", "12", "15", "24", "36", "48"))] <-
time[paste("H", time[which(time %in% c("-168", "1.5", "6", "9", "12", "15", "24", "36", "48"))], sep="")
$Time <- as.character(time[design$sample_ID])
design
<- unlist(lapply(design_list, function(x){
vac gsub("vaccine: ", "", x[grep("vaccine: ", x)])
}))<- as.factor(vac)
vac levels(vac) <- c("influenza", "influenza", "influenza", "influenza", "saline",
"pneumo", "pneumo", "pneumo", "saline", "saline")
$Vaccine <- as.character(vac[design$sample_ID])
design
<- unlist(lapply(design_list, function(x){
sampSet gsub("sample set: ", "", x[grep("sample set: ", x)])
}))$sampSet <- as.character(sampSet[design$sample_ID])
design
$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Training_Set_Vein" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))] <-
designpaste("D", design$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Training_Set_Vein" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))], sep="")
$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Training_Set_Finger" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))] <-
designpaste("H", design$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Training_Set_Finger" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))], sep="")
$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Test_Set_Vein" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))] <-
designpaste("D", design$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Test_Set_Vein" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))], sep="")
$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Test_Set_Finger" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))] <-
designpaste("D", design$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Test_Set_Finger" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))], sep="")
$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Validation_Vein" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))] <-
designpaste("D", design$Time[which(design$sampSet=="Validation_Vein" & design$Time %in% c("0", "3"))], sep="")
$Day <- gsub("D", "", design$Time)
design$Day[grep("H", design$Day)] <- as.numeric(gsub("H", "", design$Day[grep("H", design$Day)]))/24
design$Day <- as.numeric(design$Day)
design
<- design
design.All.ChaussVac
# Avg Baseline -----
<- design.All.ChaussVac[which(design.All.ChaussVac$sampSet=="Training_Set_Vein"),]
design.All.ChaussVac.trainSetVein <- design.All.ChaussVac.trainSetVein[162:214,"sample_ID"]
samplesSaline2rmv <- design.All.ChaussVac.trainSetVein[-which(design.All.ChaussVac.trainSetVein$sample_ID%in%samplesSaline2rmv),]
design.All.ChaussVac.noDup
<- design.All.ChaussVac.noDup[which(design.All.ChaussVac.noDup$Day!=0),]
design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl which(design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Day==-7),"Day"] <- 0
design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl[which(design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Time=="D-7"),"Time"] <- "D0"
design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl[
<- expr.All.ChaussVac[, design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl$sample_ID]
expr.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl for(p in unique(design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Subject_ID)){
if(length(which(design.All.ChaussVac.noDup$Subject_ID==p & (design.All.ChaussVac.noDup$Day==0 | design.All.ChaussVac.noDup$Day==-7)))>1){
which(design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Subject_ID==p & design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Day==0)] <-
expr.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl[, apply(X=cbind(expr.All.ChaussVac[, design.All.ChaussVac.noDup[which(design.All.ChaussVac.noDup$Subject_ID==p & design.All.ChaussVac.noDup$Day==0), "sample_ID"]],
which(design.All.ChaussVac.noDup$Subject_ID==p & design.All.ChaussVac.noDup$Day==-7), "sample_ID"]]),
expr.All.ChaussVac[, design.All.ChaussVac.noDup[MARGIN=1, FUN=mean, na.rm=TRUE)
}
}rownames(expr.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl) <- probesIDs
if(!all.equal(as.character(design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl$sample_ID), colnames(expr.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl))){stop("\n\n\nWARNING: EXPRESSION FILE ORDER NOT MATCHING DESIGN FILE\n\n\n")}
$Subject_ID <- as.factor(design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Subject_ID)
design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl
<- design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl[which(design.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Vaccine!="influenza"), ]
design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl $Vaccine <- as.factor(as.character(design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Vaccine))
design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl
<- expr.All.ChaussVac.AvgBl[,design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl$sample_ID] expr.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl
This function provides the result of likelihood ratio test using the linear mixed model for each gene set. For this example, we use gene sets data from Chaussabel’s modules (Chaussabel et al., 2008). TcGSA.LR
function requires:
expr
: the gene expression matrixgmt
: the gmt gene set objectdesign
: the design data matrixsubject_name
: the identification of patients in the design data matrixtime_name
: the time measurements in the design data matrixgroup_name
: the group of treatment in the design data matrix<- TcGSA::TcGSA.LR(expr = expr.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl,
tcgsa_result_MT gmt = gmt_modulesV2,
design = design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl,
subject_name = "Subject_ID",
time_name = "Day",
group_name = "Vaccine")
summary(tcgsa_result_MT)
#> A TcGSA object
#> Form of the time trend:
#> linear
#> Number of treatment groups:
#> 2
#> Number of gene sets tested for significant time trend:
#> 260
#>
#> Number of significant gene sets at a 5% threshold (BY procedure):
#> 36 out of 260 gene sets
head(TcGSA::signifLRT.TcGSA(tcgsa_result_MT)$mixedLRTadjRes)
#> GeneSet AdjPval desc
#> 1 M1.1 1.284340e-09 Platelets
#> 2 M1.2 5.945221e-06 Interferon
#> 3 M2.3 1.633082e-04 Erythrocytes
#> 4 M3.1 1.284340e-09 Erythrocytes
#> 5 M3.2 3.554220e-10 Inflammation
#> 6 M3.4 2.474143e-07 Interferon
clustTrend
builds clusters of genes from their trends dynamics. clustTrend
function requires:
tcgs
: your TcGSA objectexpr
: estimation of gene expressions with linear mixed model from TcGSA objectSubject_ID
: name of the identification of patients in the design data matrixTimePoint
: name of the time measurements in the design data matrixbaseline
(optional): value of TimePoint
used to be the referencegroup_of_interest
: name of a treatment in the design data matrix<- TcGSA::clustTrend(tcgs = tcgsa_result_MT,
clust expr=tcgsa_result_MT$Estimations,
Subject_ID=design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Patient_ID,
TimePoint=design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Day,
group.var = design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Vaccine,
group_of_interest="pneumo",
ref="saline")
clust#> A ClusteredTrends object
#>
#> Distribution of the number of trends per gene sets:
#> 1 trend: 36
#> 2 trends: 0
#> 3 trends: 0
#> 4 trends: 0
#> Total number of trends: 36 (out of 36 significant gene sets)
#>
#> Maximal number of clusters tested: 4
#>
#> Mean number of trends by significant gene set: 1
clust
shows the number of trends within the significant gene sets.
plot
draws different kinds of graphics, but we focus on heatmap graphics. This function requires:
x
: a tcgsa
objectexpr
: estimation of gene expressions with linear mixed model from a tcgsa
objectSubject_ID
: name of the subject identifier variable in the design data matrixTimePoint
: name of the time measurement variable in the design data matrixgroup_of_interest
: name of the treatment factor variable in the design data matrixclust_trends
: cluster object with the clusters of genes from their trends dynamicsplot(x=tcgsa_result_MT, expr=tcgsa_result_MT$Estimations,
Subject_ID=design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl$Patient_ID,
TimePoint=design.PNEUMOvsSALINE.ChaussVac.AvgBl$TimePoint,
group_of_interest="pneumo",
clust_trends=clust,
legend.breaks=seq(from=-2,to=2, by=0.01), time_unit="D",
subtitle="Pneumo vs Saline", cex.label.row=0.5, cex.label.col=1, cex.main=0.7,
heatmap.width=0.2, dendrogram.size=0.3, margins=c(2,3),
heatKey.size=0.8)
The heatmap shows an under (blue color) or an over (red color) expression for each significant gene sets in the pneumo
arm (vaccine) compared to the saline
arm (compared) from the clust
object. Similar expression dynamics are clustered through a hierarchical clustering showed through a dendrogram.
Note: this figure is different than the one in Hejblum et al. because here we used a linear time function (for the sake of simplicity and computational speed). To reproduce the heatmap from the original article, one must use the time_func
argument to specify a quadratic time function with an offset at Day 1.
Ashburner M, Ball CA, Blake JA, Botstein D, Butler H, Cherry JM, et al., (2000) Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology. Nat Genet 25(1):25-9.
Benjamini Y, Yekutieli D, (2001) The Control of the False Discovery Rate in Multiple Testing under Dependency. Ann Stat 29(4):1165-88.
Chaussabel D, Quinn C, Shen J, Patel P, Glaser C, Baldwin N, et al., (2008) A Modular Analysis Framework for Blood Genomics Studies: Application to Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. Immunity 29(1):150-64.
Hejblum BP, Skinner J, Thiebaut R, (2015) Time-Course Gene Set Analysis for Longitudinal Gene Expression Data. PLOS Comput Biol 11(6):e1004310.
Kanehisa M, Goto S, (2000) KEGG: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes. Nucleic Acids Res 28(1):27-30.
Obermoser G, Presnell S, Domico K, Xu H, Wang Y, Anguiano E, et al., (2013) Systems Scale Interactive Exploration Reveals Quantitative and Qualitative Differences in Response to Influenza and Pneumococcal Vaccines. Immunity 38(4):831-44.
In case the data you want to analyze is publicly available through Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), you can access it with the GEOquery
package, that can be installed with the following commands:
if (!requireNamespace("GEOquery", quietly = TRUE)) {
if (!requireNamespace("BiocManager", quietly = TRUE)){
install.packages("BiocManager")
}::install("GEOquery")
BiocManager }
More details can be found on Bioconductor and in Davis S, Meltzer P, (2007) GEOquery: a bridge between the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and Bioconductor Bioinformatics 14:1846-1847.