--- title: "Transcription factor activity inference in bulk RNA-seq" author: - name: Pau Badia-i-Mompel affiliation: - Heidelberg Universiy output: BiocStyle::html_document: self_contained: true toc: true toc_float: true toc_depth: 3 code_folding: show package: "`r pkg_ver('decoupleR')`" vignette: > %\VignetteIndexEntry{Transcription factor activity inference in bulk RNA-seq} %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown} %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8} --- ```{r setup, include=FALSE} knitr::opts_chunk$set( collapse = TRUE, comment = "#>" ) ``` Bulk RNA-seq yield many molecular readouts that are hard to interpret by themselves. One way of summarizing this information is by inferring transcription factor (TF) activities from prior knowledge. In this notebook we showcase how to use `decoupleR` for transcription factor activity inference with a bulk RNA-seq data-set where the transcription factor FOXA2 was knocked out in pancreatic cancer cell lines. The data consists of 3 Wild Type (WT) samples and 3 Knock Outs (KO). They are freely available in [GEO](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE119931). # Loading packages First, we need to load the relevant packages: ```{r "load packages", message = FALSE} ## We load the required packages library(decoupleR) library(dplyr) library(tibble) library(tidyr) library(ggplot2) library(pheatmap) library(ggrepel) ``` # Loading the data-set Here we used an already processed bulk RNA-seq data-set. We provide the normalized log-transformed counts, the experimental design meta-data and the Differential Expressed Genes (DEGs) obtained using `limma`. For this example we use `limma` but we could have used `DeSeq2`, `edgeR` or any other statistical framework. decoupleR requires a gene level statistic to perform enrichment analysis but it is agnostic of how it was generated. However, we do recommend to use statistics that include the direction of change and its significance, for example the t-value obtained for `limma`(`t`) or `DeSeq2`(`stat`). edgeR does not return such statistic but we can create our own by weighting the obtained logFC by pvalue with this formula: `-log10(pvalue) * logFC`. We can open the data like this: ```{r "load data"} inputs_dir <- system.file("extdata", package = "decoupleR") data <- readRDS(file.path(inputs_dir, "bk_data.rds")) ``` From `data` we can extract the mentioned information. Here we see the normalized log-transformed counts: ```{r "counts"} # Remove NAs and set row names counts <- data$counts %>% dplyr::mutate_if(~ any(is.na(.x)), ~ if_else(is.na(.x),0,.x)) %>% column_to_rownames(var = "gene") %>% as.matrix() head(counts) ``` The design meta-data: ```{r "design"} design <- data$design design ``` And the results of `limma`, of which we are interested in extracting the obtained t-value and p-value from the contrast: ```{r "deg"} # Extract t-values per gene deg <- data$limma_ttop %>% select(ID, logFC, t, P.Value) %>% filter(!is.na(t)) %>% column_to_rownames(var = "ID") %>% as.matrix() head(deg) ``` # CollecTRI network [CollecTRI](https://github.com/saezlab/CollecTRI) is a comprehensive resource containing a curated collection of TFs and their transcriptional targets compiled from 12 different resources. This collection provides an increased coverage of transcription factors and a superior performance in identifying perturbed TFs compared to our previous [DoRothEA](https://saezlab.github.io/dorothea/) network and other literature based GRNs. Similar to DoRothEA, interactions are weighted by their mode of regulation (activation or inhibition). For this example we will use the human version (mouse and rat are also available). We can use `decoupleR` to retrieve it from `OmniPath`. The argument `split_complexes` keeps complexes or splits them into subunits, by default we recommend to keep complexes together. ```{r "collectri"} net <- get_collectri(organism='human', split_complexes=FALSE) net ``` # Activity inference with Univariate Linear Model (ULM) To infer TF enrichment scores we will run the Univariate Linear Model (`ulm`) method. For each sample in our dataset (`mat`) and each TF in our network (`net`), it fits a linear model that predicts the observed gene expression based solely on the TF's TF-Gene interaction weights. Once fitted, the obtained t-value of the slope is the score. If it is positive, we interpret that the TF is active and if it is negative we interpret that it is inactive. ![ulm](https://decoupler-py.readthedocs.io/en/1.4.0/_images/ulm.png) To run `decoupleR` methods, we need an input matrix (`mat`), an input prior knowledge network/resource (`net`), and the name of the columns of net that we want to use. ```{r "sample_ulm", message=FALSE} # Run ulm sample_acts <- run_ulm(mat=counts, net=net, .source='source', .target='target', .mor='mor', minsize = 5) sample_acts ``` # Visualization From the obtained results we will observe the most variable activities across samples in a heat-map: ```{r "heatmap"} n_tfs <- 25 # Transform to wide matrix sample_acts_mat <- sample_acts %>% pivot_wider(id_cols = 'condition', names_from = 'source', values_from = 'score') %>% column_to_rownames('condition') %>% as.matrix() # Get top tfs with more variable means across clusters tfs <- sample_acts %>% group_by(source) %>% summarise(std = sd(score)) %>% arrange(-abs(std)) %>% head(n_tfs) %>% pull(source) sample_acts_mat <- sample_acts_mat[,tfs] # Scale per sample sample_acts_mat <- scale(sample_acts_mat) # Choose color palette palette_length = 100 my_color = colorRampPalette(c("Darkblue", "white","red"))(palette_length) my_breaks <- c(seq(-3, 0, length.out=ceiling(palette_length/2) + 1), seq(0.05, 3, length.out=floor(palette_length/2))) # Plot pheatmap(sample_acts_mat, border_color = NA, color=my_color, breaks = my_breaks) ``` We can also infer TF activities from the t-values of the DEGs between KO and WT: ```{r "contrast_ulm", message=FALSE} # Run ulm contrast_acts <- run_ulm(mat=deg[, 't', drop=FALSE], net=net, .source='source', .target='target', .mor='mor', minsize = 5) contrast_acts ``` Let's show the changes in activity between KO and WT: ```{r "barplot"} # Filter top TFs in both signs f_contrast_acts <- contrast_acts %>% mutate(rnk = NA) msk <- f_contrast_acts$score > 0 f_contrast_acts[msk, 'rnk'] <- rank(-f_contrast_acts[msk, 'score']) f_contrast_acts[!msk, 'rnk'] <- rank(-abs(f_contrast_acts[!msk, 'score'])) tfs <- f_contrast_acts %>% arrange(rnk) %>% head(n_tfs) %>% pull(source) f_contrast_acts <- f_contrast_acts %>% filter(source %in% tfs) # Plot ggplot(f_contrast_acts, aes(x = reorder(source, score), y = score)) + geom_bar(aes(fill = score), stat = "identity") + scale_fill_gradient2(low = "darkblue", high = "indianred", mid = "whitesmoke", midpoint = 0) + theme_minimal() + theme(axis.title = element_text(face = "bold", size = 12), axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 45, hjust = 1, size =10, face= "bold"), axis.text.y = element_text(size =10, face= "bold"), panel.grid.major = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank()) + xlab("TFs") ``` The TFs GLI3 and SPDEF are deactivated in KO when compared to WT, while MUC and NFKB1 seem to be activated. We can further visualize the most differential target genes in each TF along their p-values to interpret the results. For example, let's see the genes that are belong to SP1: ```{r "targets", warning=F} tf <- 'SP1' df <- net %>% filter(source == tf) %>% arrange(target) %>% mutate(ID = target, color = "3") %>% column_to_rownames('target') inter <- sort(intersect(rownames(deg),rownames(df))) df <- df[inter, ] df[,c('logfc', 't_value', 'p_value')] <- deg[inter, ] df <- df %>% mutate(color = if_else(mor > 0 & t_value > 0, '1', color)) %>% mutate(color = if_else(mor > 0 & t_value < 0, '2', color)) %>% mutate(color = if_else(mor < 0 & t_value > 0, '2', color)) %>% mutate(color = if_else(mor < 0 & t_value < 0, '1', color)) ggplot(df, aes(x = logfc, y = -log10(p_value), color = color, size=abs(mor))) + geom_point() + scale_colour_manual(values = c("red","royalblue3","grey")) + geom_label_repel(aes(label = ID, size=1)) + theme_minimal() + theme(legend.position = "none") + geom_vline(xintercept = 0, linetype = 'dotted') + geom_hline(yintercept = 0, linetype = 'dotted') + ggtitle(tf) ``` Here blue means that the sign of multiplying the `mor` and `t-value` is negative, meaning that these genes are "deactivating" the TF, and red means that the sign is positive, meaning that these genes are "activating" the TF. # Session information ```{r session_info, echo=FALSE} options(width = 120) sessioninfo::session_info() ```