We show in this tutorial how to use the BEclear package (Akulenko, Merl, and Helms 2016) to detect and correct batch effects in methylation data. Even though BEclear was developed for the use on methylation data, it can also be used to find and correct batch effects in other kinds of data. The central method of BEclear is based on Latent Factor Models (Candès and Recht 2009), which can in theory be used on every matrix containing real numbers to predict missing values.
BEclear 2.21.0
We guide you through the individual steps of the BEclear
package in their own chapters. They will follow in the logical order of an
example of correcting some batch affected DNA methylation data.
This article should only give a small tutorial,
more details about the individual methods can always be found in the help
sections of the BEclear package, e.g. through typing
calcBatchEffects
in the R environment with the package loaded.
To work with the methods contained in the BEclear package, a matrix or
data.frame with genes as row-names and samples as column names as well as a
samples data.frame with the first column named “sample_id” and the second
column named “batch_id” is needed as input.
BEclear is available on Bioconductor. To install it you can therefore use the BiocManager:
if (!requireNamespace("BiocManager", quietly = TRUE)) {
install.packages("BiocManager")
}
BiocManager::install("BEclear")
Otherwise you can also install BEclear from its Github repository by the following command:
if (!requireNamespace("devtools", quietly = TRUE)) {
install.packages("devtools")
}
devtools::install_github("uds-helms/BEclear")
We however recommend installing it through Bioconductor, as this takes care of installing the dependencies and furthermore you can refer to the release of Bioconductor, when using our package, which enables you to reproduce the exact conditions of your run.
During the compilation of the code, many parts of the software will be automatically tested for correct execution and reproduction of expected results. This is implemented in form of unit tests with the help of the testthat package.
When done with the installation you can simply load the package by typing:
library(BEclear)
#> Loading required package: BiocParallel
The beta values stored in the ex.data matrix were obtained from level 3 BRCA data from the TCGA portal (Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network et al. 2013). Generally, beta values are calculated by dividing the methylated signal by the sum of the unmethylated and methylated signals from a DNA methylation microrarray. In the level 3 TCGA data, this calculation has already been done. The sample data used here contains averaged beta values of probes that belong to promoter regions of single genes. Another possibility would be to use beta values of single probes, whereby the probe names should then be used instead of the gene names as rownames of the matrix.
You can load our sample data via the following command:
data("BEclearData")
It contains one matrix with the beta values:
knitr::kable(ex.data[1:10,1:5], caption = 'Some entries from the example data-set')
s20 | s21 | s22 | s23 | s24 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ACSM3 | 0.2297873 | 0.2162873 | 0.2071987 | 0.2329269 | 0.2120593 |
ADAM28 | 0.3435064 | 0.4579607 | 0.3749625 | 0.4205235 | 0.3933762 |
ADCK1 | 0.2176142 | 0.2120385 | 0.2130803 | 0.2171312 | 0.2143814 |
AFTPH | 0.0314942 | 0.0306752 | 0.0303586 | 0.0293008 | 0.0236312 |
AKAP7 | 0.1265222 | 0.0898430 | 0.1638099 | 0.1087261 | 0.1150119 |
ANKRD24 | 0.0516417 | 0.0427307 | 0.0371261 | 0.0434301 | 0.0430231 |
ANKRD44 | 0.3431776 | 0.3256014 | 0.2781775 | 0.3132249 | 0.2984070 |
ANKS4B | 0.5712550 | 0.5467739 | 0.5209191 | 0.6075328 | 0.5419098 |
APCDD1 | 0.4861491 | 0.4201033 | 0.4405887 | 0.5275998 | 0.4438821 |
APOBEC3G | 0.3636649 | 0.3301716 | 0.3749334 | 0.3509543 | 0.4406087 |
And one data.frame containing the assignment of samples to batches:
knitr::kable(ex.samples[1:10,], caption = 'Some entries from the example sample annotation')
sample_id | batch_id |
---|---|
s20 | b109 |
s21 | b109 |
s22 | b109 |
s23 | b109 |
s24 | b117 |
s25 | b117 |
s26 | b117 |
s27 | b117 |
s28 | b117 |
s29 | b117 |
For the detection of batch effects we calculate the median difference between the
beta values of a gene in a batch and the values of this gene in all other batches.
Furthermore we use a non-parametric Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (ks.test
) to compare the
distribution of the beta value for this gene in the batch and the other batches.
If one gene in a batch has a p-value determined by the ks.test
of less or equal
0.01 and a median difference of greater or equal 0.05 it is considered batch effected.
For the calculation of the batch effects you just use the calcBatchEffects
function.
It calculates both median difference and p-value. By default we correct the p-values
by the false discovery rate developed by Benjamini and Hochberg (1995), but you can use all adjustment
methods covered by p.adjust.methods
.
batchEffect <- calcBatchEffects(
data = ex.data, samples = ex.samples,
adjusted = TRUE, method = "fdr"
)
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:13] Transforming matrix to data.table
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:13] Calculate the batch effects for 10 batches
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:14] Adjusting p-values
mdifs <- batchEffect$med
pvals <- batchEffect$pval
To see which genes in which batches are effected you use the calcSummary
function
as follows:
summary <- calcSummary(medians = mdifs, pvalues = pvals)
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:14] Generating a summary table
knitr::kable(head(summary), caption = 'Summary over the batch affected gene-sample combination of the example data set')
gene | batch_id | median | pvalue |
---|---|---|---|
ADAM28 | b136 | 0.2539018 | 0.0003223 |
AKAP7 | b136 | 0.2236255 | 0.0000298 |
ANKRD44 | b136 | 0.2578482 | 0.0024103 |
APCDD1 | b136 | 0.2078392 | 0.0000016 |
AREG | b136 | 0.3659073 | 0.0001033 |
BCL2L14 | b136 | 0.2356189 | 0.0058860 |
Furthermore you can calculate a batch score for a whole batch to determine the severity how it is affected.
score <- calcScore(ex.data, ex.samples, summary, dir = getwd())
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:14] Calculating the scores for 10 batches
knitr::kable(score, caption = 'Batch scores of the example data-set')
batch_id | count05 | count1 | count2 | count3 | count4 | count5 | count6 | count7 | count8 | count9 | BEscore | dixonPval |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
b109 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | NA |
b117 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | NA |
b120 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | NA |
b124 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | NA |
b136 | 10 | 2 | 31 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.752 | 1e-07 |
b142 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | NA |
b155 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | NA |
b72 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | NA |
b185 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | NA |
b61 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.000 | NA |
For the imputation of missing values we use a slightly modified version of the stochastic gradient descent method described by Koren, Bell, and Volinsky (2009). In this section we will describe our implementation of this method and how to use it.
We assume that our complete data matrix \(D_{ij}\) can be described by the effects of a matrix \(L_i\), which represents the effect of the features (genes in our case) and a matrix \(R_j\) describing the effect of the samples in the following way:
\[\begin{equation} D_{ij} = L_{i}^{T} \times R_{j} . \tag{1} \end{equation}\]
The method can either be run on the complete data set or the data set can be divided into blocks on which the method is applied. This division into blocks allows for parallelisation of the method, which can be useful to speed up the process. We have found that a block-size of 60x60 works well(Akulenko, Merl, and Helms 2016).
The error for each block is calculated in the following way:
\[\begin{equation} errorMatrix_{ij} = Block_{ij} - L_{i}^{T} \times R_{j} . \tag{2} \end{equation}\]
We try to minimize the following loss function through a gradient descent:
\[\begin{equation} min_{L, R} \sum_{ij \in K}(errorMatrix_{ij}^2) + \lambda \times (\left\lVert L_{i}\right\rVert_{F}^{2} + \left\lVert R_{j}\right\rVert_{F}^{2} ). \tag{3} \end{equation}\] Where \(K\) is the set of tuples \((i,j)\) for which the value is present. \(\lambda\) is the penalty coefficient, which controls how restrictive the selection of variables should be. The default of \(\lambda\) is 1.
Another coefficient \(\gamma\) controls the size of the step by which the two matrices \(L_i\) and \(R_j\) are modified. It is initialized by default with 0.01 and its value changes during the iterations (epochs).
For the first iteration the matrices \(L_i\) and \(R_j\) are filled with random values
generated by the rnorm
function from the stats
package and the initial loss and error matrix are calculated.
Then for each iteration the following is done:
\(L_i\) and \(R_j\) are modified proportional by \(\gamma\) through the following calculation:
\[\begin{equation} L_i = L_i + 2 \times \gamma \times (errorMatrix_{ij} \times R_j - \lambda \times L_i). (\#eq:Lmod) \end{equation}\]
\[\begin{equation} R_j = R_j + 2 \times \gamma \times (errorMatrix_{ij} \times L_i - \lambda \times R_j). (\#eq:Rmod) \end{equation}\]
Then the new error matrix and loss are calculated.
If the old loss is smaller than the new one:
Else:
The \(L_i\) and \(R_j\) matrices at the end of the last iteration are then used to impute the missing data. The default number of iterations is 50.
First you have to set the found batch effect values to NAs. You can do this
by using the clearBEgenes
function:
cleared.data <- clearBEgenes(ex.data, ex.samples, summary)
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] Removing values with batch effect:
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] 510 values ( 5.1 % of the data) set to NA
In case you’re using BEclear not for correcting batch effects, but just for the data imputation, you would have to set the values you want to impute to NA, if they not already are.
For the data imputation you use the imputeMissingData
function:
library(ids)
corrected.data <- imputeMissingData(cleared.data,
rowBlockSize = 60,
colBlockSize = 60, epochs = 50,
outputFormat = "", dir = getwd()
)
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] Starting the imputation of missing values.
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] This might take a while.
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] BEclear imputation is started:
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] block size: 60 x 60
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] Impute missing data for block 1 of 4
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] Impute missing data for block 2 of 4
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] Impute missing data for block 3 of 4
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] Impute missing data for block 4 of 4
If you set rowBlockSize and colBlockSize to 0 the matrix will not be divided into block and the gradient descent will be applied to the matrix as a whole.
Note that sometimes during the prediction, it can happen that values beyond the
boundaries of beta values are returned, that means values smaller than zero or
greater than one. findWrongValues
simply returns a list of these values,
together with the position in the output matrix, replaceOutsideValues
corrects
these by simply setting the wrong values to zero or one, respectively. Note that
these methods are especially designed for the prediction of beta values from
DNA methylation data, which only take on values between 0 and 1.
corrected.data.valid<-replaceOutsideValues(corrected.data)
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] Replacing values below 0 or above 1:
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] 0 values replaced
In this case there were no values to be replaced.
Besides the individual methods BEclear also offers an overall method, which executes all the described previous steps in one call. It also applies some preprocessing to your data set if necessary.
result <- correctBatchEffect(data = ex.data, samples = ex.samples)
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] Transforming matrix to data.table
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:15] Calculate the batch effects for 10 batches
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] Adjusting p-values
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] Generating a summary table
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] Calculating the scores for 10 batches
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] Removing values with batch effect:
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] 510 values ( 5.1 % of the data) set to NA
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] Starting the imputation of missing values.
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] This might take a while.
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] BEclear imputation is started:
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] block size: 60 x 60
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] Impute missing data for block 1 of 4
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] Impute missing data for block 2 of 4
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] Impute missing data for block 3 of 4
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:16] Impute missing data for block 4 of 4
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:17] Replacing values below 0 or above 1:
#> INFO [2024-05-01 16:17:17] 0 values replaced
Returned is a list containing all results from the executed functions.
For parallelization we use the BiocParellel package.
However by default all methods are executed in serial mode.
The methods CalcBatchEffect
, imputeMissingData
and correctBatchEffect
support parallelization through there parameter BPPARAM
, which takes a BiocParallel::BiocParallelParam
class as an argument.
Type the following to get an overview over the supported evaluation environments:
?BiocParallel::BiocParallelParam
Additionally BEclear also includes a method for
plotting the batch effects.
Let us now use the makeBoxplot
to compare the distributions of the values
in the different samples before and after the batch effect correction:
makeBoxplot(ex.data, ex.samples, score,
bySamples = TRUE,
col = "standard", main = "Example data", xlab = "Batch",
ylab = "Beta value", scoreCol = TRUE)