pdmGenes: A Function to output the Top Ranked Genes from a Penalized Discriminant Classifier

Description

After fitting a classifier, it is often desirable to output the most "interesting" genes for further validation. This function will output the top 'n' genes that discriminate between each class, along with an estimate of the stability of the observed rankings (see details for more information).

Usage

pdmGenes(formula = formula(data), method = c("pls", "pcr", "ridge"),
data = sys.frame(sys.parent()), weights, theta, dimension = J - 1,
eps = .Machine$double.eps, genelist = NULL, list.length = NULL, B = 100, ...)

Arguments

formula

A symbolic description of the model to be fit. Details given below.

method

One of "pls", "pcr", "ridge", corresponding to partial least squares, principal components regression and ridge regression.

data

An optional data.frame that contains the variables in the model. If not found in data, the variables are taken from environment(formula), typically the environment from which pdmClass is called. Note that unlike most microarray analyses, in this case rows are samples and columns are genes.

weights

An optional vector of sample weights. Defaults to 1.

theta

An optional matrix of class scores, typically with less than J - 1 columns.

dimension

The dimension of the solution, no greater than J - 1, where J is the number of classes. Defaults to J - 1.

eps

A threshold for excluding small discriminant variables. Defaults to .Machine$double.eps.

genelist

A vector of gene names, one per gene.

list.length

The number of 'top' genes to output.

The number of bootstrap samples to use for estimating stability. Defaults to 100. More than this may take an inordinate amount of time.

...

Additional parameters to pass to method.

Value

A list containing a data.frame for each comparison. The first column of each data.frame contains the gene names, and the second column contains the frequency that the gene was observed in the bootstrapped samples.

Details

The formula interface is identical to all other formula calls in R, namely Y ~ X, where Y is a numeric vector of class assignments and X is a matrix or data.frame containing the gene expression values. Note that unlike most microarray analyses, in this instance the columns of X are genes and rows are samples, so most calls will require something similar to Y ~ t(X).

The dimension of the solution is typically J - 1, where J is the number of classes. The model fit uses contr.treatment contrasts, which means that all of the coefficients in the model are comparing the given class to a baseline class. Therefore, the genes listed are those that discriminate between a given class and the baseline. For instance, if there are three classes (characterized by a numeric vector of 1s, 2s, and 3s), then there will be two sets of 'top genes'. The first set will be those genes that discriminate between class 2 and class 1, whereas the second set will be the genes that discriminate between class 3 and class 1. The 'Y' vector will therefore need to be constructed to give the comparisons of interest.

References

http://www.sph.umich.edu/~ghoshd/COMPBIO/POPTSCORE

Examples

Run this code

library(fibroEset)
data(fibroEset)
y <- as.factor(pData(fibroEset)[,2])
x <- t(exprs(fibroEset))
genes <- featureNames(fibroEset)
pdmGenes(y ~ x, genelist = genes, list.length = 25, B = 10)

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