6.4 Genomic intervals with more information: SummarizedExperiment class

As we have seen, genomic intervals can be mainly contained in a GRanges object. It can also contain additional columns associated with each interval. Here you can save information such as read counts or other scores associated with the interval. However, genomic data often have many layers. With GRanges you can have a table associated with the intervals, but what happens if you have many tables and each table has some metadata associated with it. In addition, rows and columns might have additional annotation that cannot be contained by row or column names. For these cases, the SummarizedExperiment class is ideal. It can hold multi-layered tabular data associated with each genomic interval and the meta-data associated with rows and columns, or associated with each table. For example, genomic intervals associated with the SummarizedExperiment object can be gene locations, and each tabular data structure can be RNA-seq read counts in a time course experiment. Each table could represent different conditions in which experiments are performed. The SummarizedExperiment class is outlined in the figure below (Figure 6.5 ).

Overview of SummarizedExperiment class and functions. Adapted from the SummarizedExperiment package vignette.

FIGURE 6.5: Overview of SummarizedExperiment class and functions. Adapted from the SummarizedExperiment package vignette.

6.4.1 Create a SummarizedExperiment object

Here we show how to create a basic SummarizedExperiment object. We will first create a matrix of read counts. This matrix will represent read counts from a series of RNA-seq experiments from different time points. Following that, we create a GRanges object to represent the locations of the genes, and a table for column annotations. This will include the names for the columns and any other value we want to represent. Finally, we will create a SummarizedExperiment object by combining all those pieces.

# simulate an RNA-seq read counts table
nrows <- 200
ncols <- 6
counts <- matrix(runif(nrows * ncols, 1, 1e4), nrows)

# create gene locations
rowRanges <- GRanges(rep(c("chr1", "chr2"), c(50, 150)),
                     IRanges(floor(runif(200, 1e5, 1e6)), width=100),
                     strand=sample(c("+", "-"), 200, TRUE),
                     feature_id=paste0("gene", 1:200))

# create table for the columns
colData <- DataFrame(timepoint=1:6,
                     row.names=LETTERS[1:6])


# create SummarizedExperiment object
se=SummarizedExperiment(assays=list(counts=counts),
                     rowRanges=rowRanges, colData=colData)

se
## class: RangedSummarizedExperiment 
## dim: 200 6 
## metadata(0):
## assays(1): counts
## rownames: NULL
## rowData names(1): feature_id
## colnames(6): A B ... E F
## colData names(1): timepoint

6.4.2 Subset and manipulate the SummarizedExperiment object

Now that we have a SummarizedExperiment object, we can subset it and extract/change parts of it.

6.4.2.1 Extracting parts of the object

colData() and rowData() extract the column-associated and row-associated tables. metaData() extracts the meta-data table if there is any table associated.

colData(se) # extract column associated data
## DataFrame with 6 rows and 1 column
##   timepoint
##   <integer>
## A         1
## B         2
## C         3
## D         4
## E         5
## F         6
rowData(se) # extrac row associated data
## DataFrame with 200 rows and 1 column
##      feature_id
##     <character>
## 1         gene1
## 2         gene2
## 3         gene3
## 4         gene4
## 5         gene5
## ...         ...
## 196     gene196
## 197     gene197
## 198     gene198
## 199     gene199
## 200     gene200

To extract the main table or tables that contain the values of interest such as read counts, we must use the assays() function. This returns a list of DataFrame objects associated with the object.

assays(se) # extract list of assays
## List of length 1
## names(1): counts

You can use names with $ or [] notation to extract specific tables from the list.

assays(se)$counts # get the table named "counts"

assays(se)[[1]] # get the first table

6.4.2.2 Subsetting

Subsetting is easy using [ ] notation. This is similar to the way we subset data frames or matrices.

# subset the first five transcripts and first three samples
se[1:5, 1:3]
## class: RangedSummarizedExperiment 
## dim: 5 3 
## metadata(0):
## assays(1): counts
## rownames: NULL
## rowData names(1): feature_id
## colnames(3): A B C
## colData names(1): timepoint

One can also use the $ operator to subset based on colData() columns. You can extract certain samples or in our case, time points.

se[, se$timepoint == 1]

In addition, as SummarizedExperiment objects are GRanges objects on steroids, they support all of the findOverlaps() methods and associated functions that work on GRanges objects.

# Subset for only rows which are in chr1:100,000-1,100,000 
roi <- GRanges(seqnames="chr1", ranges=100000:1100000)
subsetByOverlaps(se, roi)
## class: RangedSummarizedExperiment 
## dim: 50 6 
## metadata(0):
## assays(1): counts
## rownames: NULL
## rowData names(1): feature_id
## colnames(6): A B ... E F
## colData names(1): timepoint