[BioC] Three-color microarray analysis

[Wolfgang Huber]

Hi Tom Sing,

Thank you, this sounds reasonable. I think the analysis is conceptually 
not different from that of 4 replicates of 3 one-color arrays.

So, you could think of the measurement for each gene as a point in 3D 
space, and consider different projections (e.g. on the plane normal to 
the average vector (1,1,1)), perhaps like Fig. 7 in 
http://www-huber.embl.de/pub/pdf/hvhv.pdf

Depending on how that plot looks, one could attempt to detect gene set 
enrichment in different areas (directions) of the plot, e.g. using 
Hotelling's t-statistic and the applyByCategory function in the Category 
package; or the polar angle.

Hope this helps.

	Wolfgang

PS - was a dye swap performed between the four biological replicates? If 
not, I'd expect to pay a substantial amount of attention to confounding 
of biological effects with dye-effects.



Il Oct/17/10 7:02 PM, Thomas Sandmann ha scritto:
> Dear Wolfgang,
>
> thanks a lot for your pointers to all the different packages.
> To give you a bit more information about the experiment:
>
> In this study, two factors are investigated: genotype and food.
> Three different treatments were performed:
>
> A) wt genotype + normal food
> B) wt genotype + supplemented food
> C) mutant genotype + supplemented food
>
> Treatment/Genotype 	wt (W) 	mutant (M)
> Normal food (N) 	x 	NA
> Supplemented food (S) 	x 	x
>
>
> (x = data available, NA = not available)
>
> Each treatment was performed in four biological replicates, giving rise
> to 3 x 4 = 12 RNA samples.
> These 12 samples were analyzed on four 3-color microarrays,
> competitively hybridizing one sample from each treatment (A,B,C) to one
> array.
>
> Two contrasts are of interest to the researchers:
>
> 1.) For the wt genotype: genes with differential expression between the
> two food supplements (N, S)
> 2.) For "Supplemented food" (S) : genes with differential expression
> between wt and mutant genotypes (W, M)
>
> As these two question each refer to a single factor (either genotype OR
> food), I could perform two separate analyses on the data e.g. by
> treating the arrays like standard two-color hybridizations and
> extracting only the two channels of interest each time.
>
> Of course, I would be grateful for any advice,
> thanks,
>
> Thomas
>
> Wolfgang Huber wrote:
>> Hi Thomas
>>
>> the NchannelSet class in the Biobase package can store such data [1],
>> some of the normalisation [2] and QC-assessment [3] methods that are
>> available for one- and two-color arrays can be either used directly or
>> with a little adaptation to such data, as can the linear model based
>> analysis of limma (e.g. by treating n 3-color arrays like 3n 1-color
>> arrays).
>>
>> To be more specific, I think you will need to reveal the biological
>> question and the experimental design behind these data.
>>
>> Best wishes
>> Wolfgang
>>
>>
>> [1] Have a look at the vignette of the CCl4 package "From the Genepix
>> data files to RGList to NChannelSet" for an example where such an
>> object is constructed, which you will need to adapt to the particular
>> file format your friend uses (you'll have to modify the read.images
>> function or emulate it with calls to read.table).
>>
>> [2] vsn, quantiles, ...
>>
>> [3] boxplots, MA-plots, between-array distance heatmap, such as in the
>> arrayQualityMetrics package
>>
>>
>> Il Oct/15/10 11:08 AM, Thomas Sandmann ha scritto:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> I have received data obtained using a three-color microarray platform,
>>> e.g. three samples were labeled with three different fluorophores and
>>> hybridized competitively to a single array. Would anyone be able to
>>> point out a useful package for the analysis of three-color
>>> hybridizations ?
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot,
>>> Thomas
>>
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>