[BioC] Re: Bioconductor Digest, Vol 21, Issue 12

[Gordon Smyth]

You are reading the Limma User's Guide written for Bioconductor Release 
1.4. Could I encourage you to consider the moving onto Bioconductor 1.5? 
Even without upgrading your software, you could read a more recent User's 
Guide at http://bioinf.wehi.edu.au/limma/usersguide.pdf. Section 10 might 
help, especially section 10.5.

>Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 12:11:34 -0000
>From: "michael watson (IAH-C)" <michael.watson at bbsrc.ac.uk>
>Subject: [BioC] Confusion over limma documentation and design/contrast
>         matrices
>To: <bioconductor at stat.math.ethz.ch>
>
>Hi
>
>The confusion comes from the examples given in usersguide.pdf.  Sections
>7.3 and 8.2 both deal with two colour microarray data where a common
>reference has been used.
>
>Section 7.3 advocates the use of designMatrix() and makeContrasts(),
>where lmFit() is first used with the design matrix, and then
>contrasts.fit() is used with the contrasts matrix, and then eBayes()
>applied to the resulting linear model fit.
>
>Section 8.2 gives us the design matrix directly, and does not use a
>contrasts matrix at all.
>
>So my first question is this: with two colour cDNA microarrays which use
>a common reference, do we need both a design matrix and a contrasts
>matrix, or just a design matrix?  (I'm assuming it depends on how many
>samples there are in addition to the reference, but I'm not sure).
>
>Looking at section 8.2, the ApoAI data, we have three samples - control
>mice, ApoAI mice and the reference sample.  8 control mice were compared
>to the reference and 8 ApoAI mice were compared to the reference, and in
>all cases the reference was Cy3.  Therefore, a targets file to describe
>this experiment can reasonably be expected to look like this:
>
>    SlideNumber     Cy5 Cy3
>1           c1 Control Ref
>2           c2 Control Ref
>3           c3 Control Ref
>4           c4 Control Ref
>5           c5 Control Ref
>6           c6 Control Ref
>7           c7 Control Ref
>8           c8 Control Ref
>9           k1   ApoAI Ref
>10          k2   ApoAI Ref
>11          k3   ApoAI Ref
>12          k4   ApoAI Ref
>13          k5   ApoAI Ref
>14          k6   ApoAI Ref
>15          k7   ApoAI Ref
>16          k8   ApoAI Ref
>
>If we run modelMatrix() on this, we get this:
>
>    ApoAI Control
>1      0       1
>2      0       1
>3      0       1
>4      0       1
>5      0       1
>6      0       1
>7      0       1
>8      0       1
>9      1       0
>10     1       0
>11     1       0
>12     1       0
>13     1       0
>14     1       0
>15     1       0
>16     1       0
>
>If we then carry on the example in 7.3, and create a contrasts matrix,
>then I assume we are interested in the comparison of ApoAI knockout mice
>to Control mice, so I run:
>
> > makeContrasts(ApoAI-Control, levels=apoai.design)
>
>And get this
>
>         ApoAI - Control
>ApoAI                 1
>Control              -1
>
>So, just to take a breath here, I am using the documentation from
>section 7.3 to run against the data in section 8.2.  I now have a design
>matrix and a contrasts matrix for the ApoAI data.  The only problem is
>that they look completely different to the example design matrix given
>in section 8.2.  The design matrix there is:
>
>    Control-Ref KO-Control
>c1           1          0
>c2           1          0
>c3           1          0
>c4           1          0
>c5           1          0
>c6           1          0
>c7           1          0
>c8           1          0
>k1           1          1
>k2           1          1
>k3           1          1
>k4           1          1
>k5           1          1
>k6           1          1
>k7           1          1
>k8           1          1
>
>And there is no contrasts matrix.
>
>So, my question 2: is the design matrix given in section 8.2 the
>equivalent of using the design and contrasts matrices that I calculated
>above?

Yes it is. This has been said many, many times on this list.

Do you know how to multiply a vector by a matrix? If you do, then I think 
the best way to figure out what the design matrix is doing for you is just 
to sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil for a few minutes, and 
multiply the design matrix by the coefficient vector.

Gordon

>Question 3: does the fact that the ApoAI data only has one contrast of
>interest mean that I don't need a contrasts matrix, I only need a design
>matrix? (albeit a DIFFERENT design matrix to one that would be given by
>modelMatrix()).
>
>Question 4: can anyone recommend a good book which I can go and read and
>learn all about design and contrast matrices and their relation to
>linear models?  Everything I have read so far just says something like
>"... The design matrix is therefore this... and the contrast matrix is
>therefore this..." and doesn't actually explain how exactly the
>structure of the matrices was arrived at...
>
>Thanks and sorry for the long mail!
>
>Mick