[BioC] limma: is it best to always include paired structure (sibship) in design?

Gordon K Smyth smyth at wehi.EDU.AU
Wed Sep 19 01:56:31 CEST 2012


Dear Guido,

There actually is no valid way to compare young vs old in your experiment 
while including Sibship in the design matrix.  You would see this if you 
reverse the order of the terms in your model, forming the model 
~Sibship+TC instead of ~TC+Sibship.  You would find that the young vs old 
comparisons are all NA.

This doesn't mean that the within sibship correlations shouldn't be taken 
into account.  Your experiment is an example of a multilevel design with 
two levels of variability, one or families and one for animals within a 
family.  See Section 8.7 "Multilevel models" in the limma User's Guide for 
how to handle this:

http://bioconductor.org/packages/2.11/bioc/vignettes/limma/inst/doc/usersguide.pdf

Best wishes
Gordon

> Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 21:50:03 +0000
> From: "Hooiveld, Guido" <Guido.Hooiveld at wur.nl>
> To: "bioconductor (bioconductor at stat.math.ethz.ch)"
> 	<bioconductor at stat.math.ethz.ch>
> Subject: [BioC] limma: is it best to always include paired structure
> 	(sibship) in design?
>
> Hi,

> I am doing an analysis on a dataset, and have a question on whether or 
> not to include the paired structure (sibship) in the model fitted by 
> limma if this is not explicitly needed. We discussed this internally, 
> but didn't get consensus. Hence, I would like to ask for opinions on 
> this list... :)
>
> Let me explain:
> - Affymetrix data, RMA normalized.
> - samples from 20 subjects were analyzed on arrays, obtained from 10 'young' and 10 'old' individuals.
> - samples were taken at baseline, and after treatment with a drug (WY).
>
> Part of target file:
>> targets
>
>          Filename       Treatment     Sibship Category
> 1        G068_B07_05_05_CTRL.CEL Ctrl     5        old
> 2        G068_B09_06_06_CTRL.CEL Ctrl     6        old
> 3        G068_C05_07_07_CTRL.CEL Ctrl     7        old
> 4        G068_C09_09_09_CTRL_2.CEL        Ctrl     9        young
> 5        G068_D05_10_10_CTRL.CEL Ctrl     10      young
> 6        G068_D07_11_11_CTRL.CEL Ctrl     11      young
> 7        G068_F07_17_05_WY.CEL    WY     5        old
> 8        G068_F09_18_06_WY.CEL    WY     6        old
> 9        G068_G05_19_07_WY.CEL    WY     7        old
> 10      G068_G09_21_09_WY.CEL    WY     9        young
> 11      G068_H05_22_10_WY.CEL    WY     10      young
> 12      G068_H07_23_11_WY.CEL    WY     11      young
>
> It is obvious that for the treatment effect a paired analysis should be 
> performed (using sibship info). This could be done for the whole group, 
> or for young and old separately.
>
>> TC <- as.factor(paste(targets$Treatment, targets$Category, sep="."))
>> design <- model.matrix(~0+TC+Sibship)
>>
>> fit <- lmFit(x.norm, design)
> Coefficients not estimable: Sibship8 Sibship12
> Warning message:
> Partial NA coefficients for 19682 probe(s)
>>
>> #test for effect of WY in old and young
>> cont.matrix <- makeContrasts(
> + WYold=(TCWY.old-TCCtrl.old),
> + WYyoung=(TCWY.young-TCCtrl.young),
> + levels=design)
>>
>> fit2 <- contrasts.fit(fit, cont.matrix)
>> fit2 <- eBayes(fit2)
>
>
> If I would like to identify the probesets that are differentially 
> expressed between old and young under either control or treatment 
> conditions, I am essentially performing an unpaired t-test. Hence, info 
> on sibship is thus not required.
>
>> cont.matrix <- makeContrasts(
> + ctrlold_ctrlyoung=(TCCtrl.old-TCCtrl.young),
> + WYold_WYyoung=(TCWY.old-TCWY.young),
> + levels=design)
>>
>
> However, I noticed that the results of these 2nd set of comparisons (the old vs young) are strongly affected by including or not the sibship in the design. In other words, if I define this design:
>> design <- model.matrix(~0+TC+Sibship)
> I get a completely different set of top regulated probesets for the before mentioned contrasts when compared to this design (without sibship):
>> design <- model.matrix(~0+TC)
> I noticed that also the p-values are much smaller when including the sibship.
>
> As an example,
> WITH sibship:
>> topTable(fit2,coef=1)
>             ID     logFC  AveExpr         t      P.Value    adj.P.Val        B
> 15031    671_at -4.763308 5.591752 -51.58016 4.457435e-18 6.583366e-14 29.06475
> 9938    4317_at -5.545104 4.893897 -50.17288 6.689732e-18 6.583366e-14 28.82092
> 7454    2944_at -7.992487 5.861613 -43.89646 4.747228e-17 3.114498e-13 27.56297
> 14844 654433_at  5.136677 5.807219  40.89921 1.337134e-16 6.579367e-13 26.84567
> 1115    1088_at -4.762000 5.650997 -39.67501 2.085766e-16 8.210408e-13 26.52704
> 656    10321_at -6.458380 5.445312 -37.74764 4.319761e-16 1.417026e-12 25.99187
> 4162    1991_at -4.080680 6.171290 -36.76955 6.339135e-16 1.627014e-12 25.70344
> 3784    1669_at -6.130596 5.171480 -36.66315 6.613207e-16 1.627014e-12 25.67134
> 9557    4057_at -6.079963 5.789428 -32.16516 4.460724e-15 9.755107e-12 24.17063
> 2584    1359_at  3.730962 6.155636  30.49084 9.709508e-15 1.911025e-11 23.53108
>>
>
> WITHOUT sibship:
>> topTable(fit2,coef=1)
>             ID     logFC  AveExpr         t      P.Value    adj.P.Val         B
> 14844 654433_at  5.320186 5.807219  9.802842 2.297163e-09 2.577632e-05 11.534050
> 18751   9173_at  3.052422 4.715249  9.439677 4.453505e-09 2.577632e-05 10.917557
> 6220    2624_at  2.443030 5.771388  9.281647 5.970493e-09 2.577632e-05 10.643512
> 13773  59340_at  4.154059 4.967316  9.221019 6.686698e-09 2.577632e-05 10.537431
> 2584    1359_at  3.572039 6.155636  9.095515 8.466416e-09 2.577632e-05 10.316169
> 16233  79608_at  1.774024 5.678042  9.073712 8.822506e-09 2.577632e-05 10.277501
> 2040    1232_at  2.911866 4.211083  9.053443 9.167473e-09 2.577632e-05 10.241491
> 17108  83478_at  1.522142 6.045796  8.750724 1.635842e-08 4.024580e-05  9.696605
> 1855    1178_at  3.134552 8.481612  8.619180 2.111666e-08 4.304048e-05  9.455663
> 6733    2766_at -2.157836 5.223548 -8.568223 2.332607e-08 4.304048e-05  9.361647
>>
>
> Thus, although it is not required, would it be recommended to include for the 2nd set of contrasts the paired structure of the data in the design?
> I would argue to do so (since intuitively I feel it would be good to always include as much info as possible on the correlation structure of the data), but as said not everyone in the project team agrees with me.
>
> So any opinions/comments are much appreciated.
>
> Regards,
> Guido
>
>
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 2.15.1 (2012-06-22)
> Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
>
> locale:
> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252    LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C                           LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] splines   stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> other attached packages:
> [1] hugene11stv1hsentrezg.db_15.1.0 org.Hs.eg.db_2.7.1              RSQLite_0.11.1                  DBI_0.2-5                       hugene11stv1hsentrezgcdf_15.1.0 AnnotationDbi_1.18.3
> [7] qvalue_1.30.0                   multtest_2.12.0                 affy_1.34.0                     limma_3.12.3                    pamr_1.54                       survival_2.36-14
> [13] cluster_1.14.2                  bladderbatch_1.0.3              Biobase_2.16.0                  BiocGenerics_0.2.0              sva_3.2.1                       mgcv_1.7-20
> [19] corpcor_1.6.4                   BiocInstaller_1.4.7
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] affyio_1.24.0         grid_2.15.1           IRanges_1.14.4        lattice_0.20-10       MASS_7.3-21           Matrix_1.0-9          nlme_3.1-104          preprocessCore_1.18.0
> [9] stats4_2.15.1         tcltk_2.15.1          tools_2.15.1          zlibbioc_1.2.0
>>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Guido Hooiveld, PhD
> Nutrition, Metabolism & Genomics Group
> Division of Human Nutrition
> Wageningen University
> Biotechnion, Bomenweg 2
> NL-6703 HD Wageningen
> the Netherlands
> tel: (+)31 317 485788
> fax: (+)31 317 483342
> email:      guido.hooiveld at wur.nl
> internet:   http://nutrigene.4t.com
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qFHaMnoAAAAJ
> http://www.researcherid.com/rid/F-4912-2010
>

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