gsea: GSEA summary dot plot

In plotthis: High-Level Plotting Built Upon 'ggplot2' and Other Plotting Packages

GSEA summary dot plot

Description

Produces a summary dot plot of GSEA (Gene Set Enrichment Analysis) results. Each row represents a gene set (term), positioned along the x-axis by its Normalized Enrichment Score (NES). Dot colour encodes the significance level (typically -log10(p.adjust)) on a continuous gradient, and each row includes a miniature line plot showing the gene ranks or running enrichment score for that term's gene set.

The function supports both DOSE and fgsea package output formats via the in_form parameter. Terms can be ranked and selected by a significance metric (top_term, metric), with non-significant terms rendered in grey. The per-term line plots can show either the raw preranked gene statistics (line_by = "prerank") or the running enrichment score (line_by = "running_score").

Usage

GSEASummaryPlot(
  data,
  in_form = c("auto", "dose", "fgsea"),
  gene_ranks = "@gene_ranks",
  gene_sets = "@gene_sets",
  top_term = 10,
  metric = "p.adjust",
  cutoff = 0.05,
  character_width = 50,
  line_plot_size = 0.25,
  metric_name = metric,
  nonsig_name = "Insignificant",
  linewidth = 0.2,
  line_by = c("prerank", "running_score"),
  title = NULL,
  subtitle = NULL,
  xlab = NULL,
  ylab = NULL,
  alpha = 0.6,
  aspect.ratio = 1,
  legend.position = "right",
  legend.direction = "vertical",
  theme = "theme_this",
  theme_args = list(),
  palette = "Spectral",
  palcolor = NULL,
  palreverse = FALSE,
  seed = 8525,
  ...
)

GSEAPlot(
  data,
  in_form = c("auto", "dose", "fgsea"),
  gene_ranks = "@gene_ranks",
  gene_sets = "@gene_sets",
  gs = NULL,
  sample_coregenes = FALSE,
  line_width = 1.5,
  line_alpha = 1,
  line_color = "#6BB82D",
  n_coregenes = 10,
  genes_label = NULL,
  label_fg = "black",
  label_bg = "white",
  label_bg_r = 0.1,
  label_size = 4,
  title = NULL,
  subtitle = NULL,
  xlab = NULL,
  ylab = NULL,
  combine = TRUE,
  nrow = NULL,
  ncol = NULL,
  byrow = TRUE,
  seed = 8525,
  axes = NULL,
  axis_titles = axes,
  guides = NULL,
  design = NULL,
  ...
)

Arguments

data	A data frame.
in_form	The format of the input data. See GSEASummaryPlot for details.
gene_ranks	A named numeric vector of gene-level rank statistics, with gene identifiers as names. Used to construct the per-term line plots. If a character string starting with "@", the attribute of data with that name (minus the "@") is used as the gene ranks vector.
gene_sets	A named list of gene sets. Each name must correspond to an ID in data, and each element is a character vector of gene identifiers. A GSEA ridge plot is generated for each gene set in the list. If you only want to plot a subset of gene sets, subset the list before passing it to this function. If a character string starting with "@", the attribute of data with that name (minus the "@") is used.
top_term	Integer specifying the number of top terms to display, ranked by metric. If NULL, all terms are shown.
metric	Character string specifying the column name used to rank terms and assess significance. Typically "p.adjust" or "pvalue". Terms are ranked by this column (ascending, lower is better) when top_term is set. The same column is transformed to -log10(metric) for the colour gradient.
cutoff	Numeric threshold for the metric column. Terms with values below this cutoff are coloured on a gradient; terms above are drawn in grey ("grey80") and labelled as insignificant via nonsig_name. Default is 0.05. If NULL, all terms are treated as significant.
character_width	Integer specifying the maximum character width for wrapping term descriptions on the y-axis. Default is 50.
line_plot_size	Numeric controlling the size of the per-term miniature enrichment plots embedded in each row. Expressed as a fraction of the plot panel dimensions. Default is 0.25.
metric_name	Character string for the colour bar legend title. Defaults to the value of metric.
nonsig_name	Character string for the legend entry label used for non-significant terms. Default is "Insignificant".
linewidth	Numeric specifying the line width within the per-term miniature enrichment plots. Default is 0.2.
line_by	The method used to compute the per-term line plots: "prerank" (default): Use the gene ranks as the bar heights (raw ranking metric). "running_score": Use the running enrichment score computed by gsea_running_score().
title	A character string specifying the title of the plot. A function can be used to generate the title based on the default title. This is useful when split_by is used and the title needs to be dynamic.
subtitle	A character string specifying the subtitle of the plot.
xlab	A character string specifying the x-axis label.
ylab	A character string specifying the y-axis label.
alpha	A numeric value specifying the transparency of the plot.
aspect.ratio	A numeric value specifying the aspect ratio of the plot.
legend.position	A character string specifying the position of the legend. if waiver(), for single groups, the legend will be "none", otherwise "right".
legend.direction	A character string specifying the direction of the legend.
theme	A character string or a theme class (i.e. ggplot2::theme_classic) specifying the theme to use. Default is "theme_this".
theme_args	A list of arguments to pass to the theme function.
palette	A character string specifying the palette to use. A named list or vector can be used to specify the palettes for different split_by values.
palcolor	A character string specifying the color to use in the palette. A named list can be used to specify the colors for different split_by values. If some values are missing, the values from the palette will be used (palcolor will be NULL for those values).
palreverse	A logical value indicating whether to reverse the palette. Default is FALSE.
seed	A numeric seed for reproducibility. Passed to validate_common_args().
...	Additional arguments.
gs	Character vector of gene set IDs to plot. If NULL (default), all gene sets in gene_sets that appear in data$ID are plotted.
sample_coregenes	Logical; if TRUE, core enrichment genes are sampled randomly for labelling. If FALSE (default), the first n_coregenes core enrichment genes are used.
line_width	Numeric specifying the line width for the running enrichment score curve. Default is 1.5.
line_alpha	Numeric alpha transparency for the running score line and hit indicator bars. Default is 1.
line_color	Character string specifying the colour of the running enrichment score line. Default is "#6BB82D".
n_coregenes	Integer specifying the number of core enrichment genes to label on the running score plot. Default is 10. Ignored when genes_label is provided.
genes_label	Character vector of specific gene names to label on the running score plot. When provided, n_coregenes is ignored.
label_fg	Character string specifying the text colour of gene labels. Default is "black".
label_bg	Character string specifying the background colour of gene labels. Default is "white".
label_bg_r	Numeric specifying the corner radius of the label background. Default is 0.1.
label_size	Numeric specifying the font size of the label text. Default is 4.
combine	Logical; when TRUE (default), returns a combined patchwork object. When FALSE, returns a named list of individual patchwork objects (one per gene set).
ncol, nrow	Integer number of columns / rows for the combined layout (passed to combine_plots()).
byrow	Logical; fill the combined layout by row. Default TRUE (passed to combine_plots()).
axes	A character string specifying how axes should be treated across the combined layout (passed to combine_plots()).
axis_titles	A character string specifying how axis titles should be treated across the combined layout. Defaults to axes.
guides	A character string specifying how guides (legends) should be collected across panels (passed to combine_plots()).
design	A custom layout design for the combined plot (passed to combine_plots()).

Value

A ggplot object with height and width attributes (in inches) attached.

A patchwork object when combine = TRUE, or a named list of patchwork objects when combine = FALSE. Each individual plot has height and width attributes in inches.

Examples

data(gsea_example)

# Default summary dot plot with preranked gene statistics
GSEASummaryPlot(gsea_example)

# Use running enrichment score for per-term line plots
GSEASummaryPlot(gsea_example, line_by = "running_score")

# Raise the significance cutoff (all terms are coloured)
GSEASummaryPlot(gsea_example, cutoff = 0.01)


data(gsea_example)

# Single gene set
GSEAPlot(gsea_example, gene_sets = attr(gsea_example, "gene_sets")[1])

# Multiple gene sets arranged in a grid
GSEAPlot(gsea_example, gene_sets = attr(gsea_example, "gene_sets")[1:4])

plotthis documentation built on July 9, 2026, 5:07 p.m.