How to create a list of differentially expressed (DE) genes after normalization with RUVSeq?

Question

I am using edgeR to perform differential expression (DE) analysis on a set of RNA-seq data samples (2 controls; 8 treatments). To correct for batch effects, I am using RUVSeq.

I am able to get a list of DE genes without normalization:

x <- as.factor(rep(c("Ctl","Inf"),c(2,8)))
set <- newSeqExpressionSet(as.matrix(counttable),phenoData=data.frame(x,row.names=colnames(counttable)))
design <- model.matrix(~x, data=pData(set))
y <- DGEList(counts=counts(set), group=x)
y <- calcNormFactors(y, method="upperquartile")
y <- estimateGLMCommonDisp(y, design)
y <- estimateGLMTagwiseDisp(y, design)
fit <- glmFit(y, design)
lrt <- glmLRT(fit, coef=2)
top <- topTags(lrt, n=nrow(set))$table
write.table(top, paste(OUT, "DE_genelist.txt", sep=""))

Then immediately after creating the "top" object, I use RUVg to normalize:

# [...]
top <- topTags(lrt, n=nrow(set))$table
empirical <- rownames(set)[which(!(rownames(set) %in% rownames(top)[1:5000]))]
ruvg <- RUVg(set, empirical, k=1)
write.table(ruvg, paste(OUT, "DE_RUVg_genelist.txt", sep=""))

And I get the error:

Error in as.data.frame.default(x[[i]], optional = TRUE) : 
  cannot coerce class ‘structure("SeqExpressionSet", package = "EDASeq")’ to a data.frame

I am not sure how to print the list of normalized results like I can with the unnormalized data. Ideally, I would get a file with the same format as the edgeR output (as a .csv or .txt file):

"logFC" "logCPM" "LR" "PValue" "FDR"
"COBLL1" -2.150 4.427061248733 75.0739519350016 4.53408921348828e-18 9.51203608115384e-15
"UBE2D1" -2.178 3.577168782408 74.9346752854903 4.86549160161322e-18 9.51203608115384e-15
"NEK7" -2.404 4.020072739285 72.6539117671717 1.54500340443843e-17 2.71843349010941e-14
"SMC6" -2.300 5.674738981329 61.8130019860261 3.7767230643666e-15 3.4974443325016e-12

How can I get a list of genes as an output after normalization with RUVSeq?

Answer 1

You do the normalization before running your edgeR. The purpose of RUVg is to remove "Remove Unwanted Variation Using Control Genes". In your code, you ran edgeR and then normalize the data using RUVg, which is only going to return you the normalized counts.

Using the example dataset in vignette:

library(RUVSeq)
library(zebrafishRNASeq)
data(zfGenes)
filter <- apply(zfGenes, 1, function(x) length(x[x>5])>=2)
filtered <- zfGenes[filter,]
genes <- rownames(filtered)[grep("^ENS", rownames(filtered))]
spikes <- rownames(filtered)[grep("^ERCC", rownames(filtered))]

x <- as.factor(rep(c("Ctl", "Trt"), each=3))
set <- newSeqExpressionSet(as.matrix(filtered),
                           phenoData = data.frame(x, row.names=colnames(filtered)))
set <- betweenLaneNormalization(set, which="upper")

set1 <- RUVg(set, spikes, k=1)

You can look at it, it's an expression set with counts etc, not results:

set1
SeqExpressionSet (storageMode: lockedEnvironment)
assayData: 20865 features, 6 samples 
  element names: counts, normalizedCounts, offset 
protocolData: none
phenoData
  sampleNames: Ctl1 Ctl3 ... Trt13 (6 total)
  varLabels: x W_1
  varMetadata: labelDescription
featureData: none
experimentData: use 'experimentData(object)'
Annotation:  

You run edgeR now on the results of RUVg:

design <- model.matrix(~x + W_1, data=pData(set1))
y <- DGEList(counts=counts(set1), group=x)
y <- calcNormFactors(y, method="upperquartile")
y <- estimateGLMCommonDisp(y, design)
y <- estimateGLMTagwiseDisp(y, design)
fit <- glmFit(y, design)
lrt <- glmLRT(fit, coef=2)
topTags(lrt)

Answer 2

I have not used this package but from your code it seems that ruvg is not a table. Instead, it is an R object, which means that you cannot use write.table. I think the results you want is stored in the object. All R objects contain "slots" of data, which can be accessed by @. If I were you, I would type ruvg@ and should be able to see which data slots are contained in the object.