ASE-methods: Differential Alternative Splicing Event analysis

In alexchwong/SpliceWiz: interactive analysis and visualization of alternative splicing in R

Differential Alternative Splicing Event analysis

Description

Use Limma, DESeq2, DoubleExpSeq, and edgeR wrapper functions to test for differential Alternative Splice Events (ASEs)

Usage

ASE_limma(
  se,
  test_factor,
  test_nom,
  test_denom,
  batch1 = "",
  batch2 = "",
  IRmode = c("all", "annotated", "annotated_binary"),
  filter_antiover = TRUE,
  filter_antinear = FALSE
)

ASE_edgeR(
  se,
  test_factor,
  test_nom,
  test_denom,
  batch1 = "",
  batch2 = "",
  useQL = TRUE,
  IRmode = c("all", "annotated", "annotated_binary"),
  filter_antiover = TRUE,
  filter_antinear = FALSE
)

ASE_limma_timeseries(
  se,
  test_factor,
  batch1 = "",
  batch2 = "",
  degrees_of_freedom = 1,
  IRmode = c("all", "annotated", "annotated_binary"),
  filter_antiover = TRUE,
  filter_antinear = FALSE
)

ASE_edgeR_timeseries(
  se,
  test_factor,
  batch1 = "",
  batch2 = "",
  degrees_of_freedom = 1,
  useQL = TRUE,
  IRmode = c("all", "annotated", "annotated_binary"),
  filter_antiover = TRUE,
  filter_antinear = FALSE
)

ASE_DESeq(
  se,
  test_factor,
  test_nom,
  test_denom,
  batch1 = "",
  batch2 = "",
  n_threads = 1,
  IRmode = c("all", "annotated", "annotated_binary"),
  filter_antiover = TRUE,
  filter_antinear = FALSE
)

ASE_DoubleExpSeq(
  se,
  test_factor,
  test_nom,
  test_denom,
  IRmode = c("all", "annotated", "annotated_binary"),
  filter_antiover = TRUE,
  filter_antinear = FALSE
)

Arguments

se	The NxtSE object created by makeSE(). To reduce runtime and avoid excessive multiple testing, consider filtering the object using applyFilters
test_factor	The column name in the sample annotation colData(se) that contains the desired variables to be contrasted. For ASE_limma_timeseries() and ASE_DESeq() (when test_nom and test_denom parameters are left blank), test_factor must contain numerical values representing the time variable.
test_nom	The nominator condition to test for differential ASE. Usually the "treatment" condition
test_denom	The denominator condition to test against for differential ASE. Usually the "control" condition
batch1, batch2	(Optional, limma and DESeq2 only) One or two condition types containing batch information to account for.
IRmode	(default all) Choose the approach to quantify IR events. Default all considers all introns as potentially retained, and calculates IR-ratio based on total splicing across the intron using the "SpliceOver" or "SpliceMax" approach (see collateData). Other options include annotated which calculates IR-ratios for annotated introns only, and annotated_binary which calculates PSI considering the "included" isoform as the IR-transcript, and the "excluded" transcript is quantified from splice counts only across the exact intron (but not that of overlapping introns). IR-ratio are denoted as "IR" events, whereas PSIs calculated using IR and intron-spliced binary alternatives are denoted as "RI" events.
filter_antiover, filter_antinear	Whether to remove novel IR events that overlap over or near anti-sense genes. Default will exclude antiover but not antinear introns. These are ignored if strand-specific RNA-seq protocols are used.
useQL	(default TRUE) Whether to use edgeR's quasi-likelihood method to help reduce false positives from near-zero junction / intron counts. NB: edgeR's quasi-likelihood method is run with legacy method (Lun and Smyth (2017)).
degrees_of_freedom	(default 1) The complexity of time series trends modeled by ASE_limma_timeseries and ASE_edgeR_timeseries. E.g., 1 will only model linear trends, 2 extends the capacity for quadratic trends, and 3 for cubic trends, etc.
n_threads	(DESeq2 only) How many threads to use for DESeq2 based analysis.

Details

Using limma, SpliceWiz models included and excluded counts as log-normal distributed, whereas using DESeq2, SpliceWiz models included and excluded counts as negative binomial distributed with dispersion shrinkage according to their mean count expressions. For limma and DESeq2, differential ASE are considered as the "interaction" between included and excluded splice counts for each sample. See this vignette for an explanation of how this is done.

SpliceWiz's limma wrapper implements an additional filter where ASEs with an average cpm values of either Included or Excluded counts are less than 1. DESeq2 has its own method for handling outliers, which seems to work well for handling situations where PSI ~= 0 or PSI ~= 1.

Time series are supported by SpliceWiz to a limited extent. Time series analysis can be performed via limma or DESeq2. For limma time-series analysis, use ASE_limma_timeseries(), specifying the test_factor as the column of numeric values containing time series data. For DESeq, time series differential analysis can be activated using the ASE_DESeq() function, again specifying test_factor as the column containing time series data (and leaving test_nom and test_denom parameters blank). See examples below.

edgeR models counts using a negative binomial model. It accounts appropriately for zero-counts which are often problematic as PSI approaches zero or one, leading to false positives. The edgeR-based option produces differential ASEs that are less biased towards low counts. Our preliminary analysis shows it to be more accurate than limma or DoubleExpSeq based methods.

For time series analysis using edgeR, ASE_edgeR_timeseries() can be used interchangeably with its counterpart limma-based function. For complex models, please see ASE-GLM-edgeR to build your own GLM models.

Using DoubleExpSeq, included and excluded counts are modeled using the generalized beta prime distribution, using empirical Bayes shrinkage to estimate dispersion.

EventType are as follow:

• IR = intron retention (IR-ratio) - all introns are considered

• MXE = mutually exclusive exons

• SE = skipped exons

• AFE = alternate first exon

• ALE = alternate last exon

• A5SS = alternate 5'-splice site

• A3SS = alternate 3'-splice site

• RI = (known / annotated) intron retention (PSI).

NB: SpliceWiz measures intron retention events using two different approaches, the choice of which is left to the user - see ASE-methods:

• IR (intron retention) events: considers all introns to be potentially retained. Given in most scenarios there may be uncertainty as to which of the many mutually-overlapping introns are spliced to produce the major isoform, SpliceWiz adopts the IRFinder approach by using the IR-ratio. The "included" isoform is the relative abundance of the IR-transcript, as approximated by the trimmed-mean depth of coverage across the intron (excluding outliers including exons of other transcripts, intronic elements such as snoRNAs, etc). The "excluded isoform" includes all spliced transcripts that contain an overlapping intron, as estimated via SpliceWiz's SpliceOver and IRFinder's SpliceMax methods - see collateData.

• RI (annotated retained introns) considers only annotated retained introns, i.e., those annotated within the given reference. These are quantified using PSI, considering the included (IR-transcript) and excluded (splicing of the exact intron) as binary alternatives.

SpliceWiz considers "included" counts as those that represent abundance of the "included" isoform, whereas "excluded" counts represent the abundance of the "excluded" isoform. To allow comparison between modalities, SpliceWiz applies a convention whereby the "included" transcript is one where its splice junctions are by definition shorter than those of "excluded" transcripts. Specifically, this means the included / excluded isoforms are as follows:

EventType	Included	Excluded
IR or RI	Intron Retention	Spliced Intron
MXE	Upstream exon inclusion	Downstream exon inclusion
SE	Exon inclusion	Exon skipping
AFE	Downstream exon usage	Upstream exon usage
ALE	Upstream exon usage	Downstream exon usage
A5SS	Downstream 5'-SS	Upstream 5'-SS
A3SS	Upstream 3'-SS	Downstream 3'-SS

Value

For all methods, a data.table containing the following:

• EventName: The name of the ASE event. This identifies each ASE in downstream functions including makeMeanPSI, makeMatrix, and plotCoverage

• EventType: The type of event. See details section above.

• EventRegion: The genomic coordinates the event occupies. This spans the most upstream and most downstream splice junction involved in the ASE, and is use to guide the plotCoverage function.

• flags: Indicates which isoforms are NMD substrates and/or which are formed by novel splicing only.

• AvgPSI_nom, Avg_PSI_denom: the average percent spliced in / percent IR levels for the two conditions being contrasted. nom and denom in column names are replaced with the condition names. Note this is a geometric mean, based on the arithmetic mean of logit PSI values.

• deltaPSI: The difference in PSI between the mean values of the two conditions.

• abs_deltaPSI: The absolute value of difference in PSI between the mean values of the two conditions.

limma specific output

• logFC, AveExpr, t, P.Value, adj.P.Val, B: limma topTable columns of differential ASE. See limma::topTable for details.

• inc/exc_(logFC, AveExpr, t, P.Value, adj.P.Val, B): limma results for differential testing for raw included / excluded counts only

edgeR specific output equivalent to statistics returned by edgeR::topTags:

• logFC, logCPM, F, PValue, FDR: log fold change, log counts per million, F statistic, p value and (Benjamini Hochberg) adjusted p values.

• inc/exc_(...): edgeR statistics corresponding to differential expression testing for raw included / excluded counts in isolation

DESeq2 specific output

• baseMean, log2FoldChange, lfcSE, stat, pvalue, padj: DESeq2 results columns for differential ASE; see DESeq2::results for details.

• inc/exc_(baseMean, log2FoldChange, lfcSE, stat, pvalue, padj): DESeq2 results for differential testing for raw included / excluded counts only

DoubleExp specific output

• MLE_nom, MLE_denom: Maximum likelihood expectation of PSI values for the denom in column names are replaced with the condition names

• MLE_LFC: Log2-fold change of the MLE

• P.Value, adj.P.Val: Nominal and BH-adjusted P values

• n_eff: Number of effective samples (i.e. non-zero or non-unity PSI)

• mDepth: Mean Depth of splice coverage in each of the two groups.

• Dispersion_Reduced, Dispersion_Full: Dispersion values for reduced and full models. See DoubleExpSeq::DBGLM1 for details.

Functions

• ASE_limma(): Use limma to perform differential ASE analysis of a filtered NxtSE object

• ASE_edgeR(): Use edgeR to perform differential ASE analysis of a filtered NxtSE object

• ASE_limma_timeseries(): Use limma to perform differential ASE analysis of a filtered NxtSE object (time series)

• ASE_edgeR_timeseries(): Use edgeR to perform differential time series of a filtered NxtSE object

• ASE_DESeq(): Use DESeq2 to perform differential ASE analysis of a filtered NxtSE object

• ASE_DoubleExpSeq(): Use DoubleExpSeq to perform differential ASE analysis of a filtered NxtSE object (uses double exponential beta-binomial model) to estimate group dispersions, followed by LRT

References

Ritchie ME, Phipson B, Wu D, Hu Y, Law CW, Shi W, Smyth GK (2015). 'limma powers differential expression analyses for RNA-sequencing and microarray studies.' Nucleic Acids Research, 43(7), e47. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkv007

Love MI, Huber W, Anders S (2014). 'Moderated estimation of fold change and dispersion for RNA-seq data with DESeq2.' Genome Biology, 15, 550. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-014-0550-8

Ruddy S, Johnson M, Purdom E (2016). 'Shrinkage of dispersion parameters in the binomial family, with application to differential exon skipping.' Ann. Appl. Stat. 10(2): 690-725. https://doi.org/10.1214/15-AOAS871

Gilis J, Vitting-Seerup K, Van den Berge K, Clement L (2021). 'Scalable analysis of differential transcript usage for bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing applications.' F1000Research 2021, 10:374. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.51749.1

Lun A, Smyth G (2017). 'No counts, no variance: allowing for loss of degrees of freedom when assessing biological variability from RNA-seq data' Stat Appl Genet Mol Biol, 017 Apr 25;16(2):83-93. https://doi.org/10.1515/sagmb-2017-0010

Examples

# Load the NxtSE object and set up the annotations
# - see ?makeSE on example code of generating this NxtSE object
se <- SpliceWiz_example_NxtSE(novelSplicing = TRUE)

colData(se)$treatment <- rep(c("A", "B"), each = 3)
colData(se)$replicate <- rep(c("P","Q","R"), 2)

# Limma analysis (counts modeled using log-normal distribution)

require("limma")
res_limma <- ASE_limma(se, "treatment", "A", "B")

# edgeR analysis (counts modeled using negative binomial distribution)
# - QL: whether quasi-likelihood method was used

require("edgeR")
res_edgeR <- ASE_edgeR(se, "treatment", "A", "B", useQL = FALSE)
res_edgeR_QL <- ASE_edgeR(se, "treatment", "A", "B", useQL = TRUE)

# DoubleExpSeq analysis (counts modeled using beta binomial distribution)

require("DoubleExpSeq")
res_DES <- ASE_DoubleExpSeq(se, "treatment", "A", "B")

# DESeq2 analysis (counts modeled using negative binomial distribution)

require("DESeq2")
res_DESeq <- ASE_DESeq(se, "treatment", "A", "B")

# Time series examples

colData(se)$timepoint <- rep(c(1,2,3), each = 2)
colData(se)$batch <- rep(c("1", "2"), 3)

res_limma_timeseries <- ASE_limma_timeseries(se, "timepoint")
res_edgeR_timeseries <- ASE_edgeR_timeseries(se, "timepoint")
res_DESeq_timeseries <- ASE_DESeq(se, "timepoint")

alexchwong/SpliceWiz documentation built on March 17, 2024, 3:16 a.m.