[R] Help Needed on Merging Columns by Summation

[Nabila Binte Zahur]

Dear Sirs/Madam,

I am a beginner to R, and I am currently working on a data matrix which looks like this:

> head(oligo)

        ko:K00001 ko:K00003 ko:K00005 ko:K00008 ko:K00009 ko:K00010 ko:K00012
AAA       370          631                  365               67           164             455       491
KAA       603         1208                 170              157        68                495       922
NAA        60         110                     10                7            44               51        94
DAA       183         802                    41               62          26              166       263
CAA        58            12                    58                1               1              23         8
TAA       451          468                  201                90       131              320       518


For certain specific columns, I need to merge the columns in such a way that the elements get added together.

For example, in order to merge the first and the second columns, my output for the first row shld be

           ko:K00001/ko:K00003
AAA       1001 (i.e. 370+631)
KAA        1811 (i.e. 603+1208)


and so on for the whole column.

A colleague suggested using rowsum, but that seems to add up all the rows for ALL the columns and not just specified ones. Also, the output doesnt contain the column or row headers.

Could you please suggest a solution?

Yours sincerely
Nabila Binte Zahur