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grandR is an R package for the analysis of RNA-seq experiments involving metabolic RNA labeling with nucleotide conversion, such as SLAM-seq experiments [1]. In such experiments, nucleoside analogs such as 4sU are added to living cells, which take it up and incorporate it into newly synthesized RNA. Before sequencing, 4sU is converted into a cytosin analog. Reads covering 4sU sites therefore have characteristic T-to-C mismatches after read mapping, in principle providing the opportunity to differentiate newly synthesized (during the time of labeling) from pre-existing RNA.

Confounders such as sequencing errors or reads that originate from newly synthesized RNA but, by chance, do not cover sites of 4sU incorporation (usually 20-80% of all “new reads”) can be handled using specialized methods such as GRAND-SLAM [2].

Reading in the data

Throughout this vignette, we will be using the GRAND-SLAM processed SLAM-seq data set from Finkel et al. 2021 [3]. The data set contains time series (progressive labeling) samples from a human epithelial cell line (Calu3 cells); half of the samples were infected with SARS-CoV-2 for different periods of time.

The output of GRAND-SLAM is a tsv file where rows are genes and columns are read counts and other statistics (e.g., the new-to-total RNA ratio) for all samples. The data set is available on zenodo (“https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars.tsv.gz”). We start by reading this file into R:

suppressPackageStartupMessages({
    library(grandR)
    library(ggplot2)
    library(patchwork)
})
sars <- ReadGRAND("https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars.tsv.gz",
                  design=c(Design$Condition,Design$dur.4sU,Design$Replicate))
Columns(sars)
 [1] "Mock.no4sU.A" "Mock.1h.A"    "Mock.2h.A"    "Mock.2h.B"    "Mock.3h.A"    "Mock.4h.A"   
 [7] "SARS.no4sU.A" "SARS.1h.A"    "SARS.2h.A"    "SARS.2h.B"    "SARS.3h.A"    "SARS.4h.A"   

When reading in the file, we have to define the design vector. This is used to infer metadata automatically from sample names. Here sample names consist of three parts separated by dots as shown above (the Columns function returns the sample names or cell ids when analyzing a single cell data set). Each part in the sample name represents an aspect of the design. For example, the sample named Mock.2h.A is a sample from the mock condition (i.e. not infected by SARS-CoV-2), subjected to metabolic labeling for 2 hours, and is the first replicate (i.e. replicate “A”). This sample name is consistent with the three element design vector used above. It is possible to specify other design elements (of course the samples would have to be named accordingly). A list of reasonable options is predefined in the list Design.

There are names (i.e. the things you specify in the design vector) that have additional semantics. For example, for the name duration.4sU the values are interpreted like this: 4h is converted into the number 4, 30min into 0.5, and no4sU into 0. For more information, see below

The design vector is mandatory. Attempting to read in the data without it results in an error:

sars <- ReadGRAND("https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars.tsv.gz")
Error in read.grand.internal(prefix = prefix, design = design, slots = slots, : Design parameter is incompatible with input data: Mock.no4sU.A, Mock.1h.A, Mock.2h.A, Mock.2h.B, Mock.3h.A, Mock.4h.A, SARS.no4sU.A, SARS.1h.A, SARS.2h.A, SARS.2h.B, SARS.3h.A, SARS.4h.A

Alternatively, a table containing the metadata can be specified. Make sure that it contains a Name column matching the names in the GRAND-SLAM output table:

metadata = data.frame(Name=c(
  "Mock.no4sU.A","Mock.1h.A","Mock.2h.A","Mock.2h.B","Mock.3h.A","Mock.4h.A",
  "SARS.no4sU.A","SARS.1h.A","SARS.2h.A","SARS.2h.B","SARS.3h.A","SARS.4h.A"
  ),Condition=rep(c("Mock","SARS"),each=6))
sars.meta <- ReadGRAND("https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars.tsv.gz",design=metadata)
Warning: Duplicate gene symbols (n=17, e.g. SOGA3,EMG1,LYNX1,TXNRD3NB,PDE11A,POLR2J2) present,
making unique!

What is in the grandR object

ReadGRAND returns a grandR object, which contains

  1. metadata for genes
  2. metadata for samples/cells (as inferred from the sample names by the design parameter)
  3. all data matrices (counts, normalized counts, ntrs, etc. these types of data are called “slots”)
  4. analysis results

Metadata (1. and 2.) are described below. How to work with the data matrices and analysis results is described in a separate vignette.

Working with grandR objects

Here we will see how to work with grandR objects in general. A short summmary can be displayed when printing the object, and there are several functions to retrieve general information about the object:

print(sars)
grandR:
Read from https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars
19659 genes, 12 samples/cells
Available data slots: count,ntr,alpha,beta
Available analyses: 
Available plots: 
Default data slot: count
Title(sars)
[1] "sars"
nrow(sars)
[1] 19659
ncol(sars)
[1] 12

It is straight-forward to filter genes:

sars <- FilterGenes(sars)
nrow(sars)
[1] 9162

By default genes are retained if they have 100 read counts in at least half of the samples (or cells). There are many options how to filter by genes (note that FilterGenes returns a new grandR object, and below we directly call nrow on this new object to check how many genes are retained by filtering):

cat(sprintf("Genes with at least 1000 read counts in half of the columns: %d\n",
            nrow(FilterGenes(sars,minval=1000))))
Genes with at least 1000 read counts in half of the columns: 1528
cat(sprintf("Genes with at least 1000 read counts in half of the columns (retain two genes that are otherwise filtered): %d\n",
            nrow(FilterGenes(sars,minval=1000,keep=c("ATF3","ZC3H12A")))))
Genes with at least 1000 read counts in half of the columns (retain two genes that are otherwise filtered): 1530
cat(sprintf("Keep only these two genes: %d\n",
            nrow(FilterGenes(sars,use=c("ATF3","ZC3H12A")))))
Keep only these two genes: 2
sars <- NormalizeTPM(sars)     # compute transcript per million
cat(sprintf("Genes with at least 10 TPM in half of the columns: %d\n",
            nrow(FilterGenes(sars,mode.slot="tpm",minval=10))))
Genes with at least 10 TPM in half of the columns: 7795

FilterGenes essentially removes rows from the data slots. It is also possible to remove columns (i.e. samples or cells). This is done using the subset function:

mock <- subset(sars,columns = Condition=="Mock")
mock
grandR:
Read from https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars
9162 genes, 6 samples/cells
Available data slots: count,ntr,alpha,beta,tpm
Available analyses: 
Available plots: 
Default data slot: tpm

The new grandR object now only has 6 columns. The columns parameter to subset must be a logical vector, and you can use the names of the column metadata table (see below) as variables (i.e. the parameter here is a logical vector with all samples being TRUE where the Condition column is equal to “Mock”.

A closely related function is split, which returns a list of several grandR objects, each composed of samples having the same Condition.

split.list <- split(sars)
split.list
$Mock
grandR:
Read from https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars
9162 genes, 6 samples/cells
Available data slots: count,ntr,alpha,beta,tpm
Available analyses: 
Available plots: 
Default data slot: tpm

$SARS
grandR:
Read from https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars
9162 genes, 6 samples/cells
Available data slots: count,ntr,alpha,beta,tpm
Available analyses: 
Available plots: 
Default data slot: tpm
lapply(split.list,Columns)
$Mock
[1] "Mock.no4sU.A" "Mock.1h.A"    "Mock.2h.A"    "Mock.2h.B"    "Mock.3h.A"    "Mock.4h.A"   

$SARS
[1] "SARS.no4sU.A" "SARS.1h.A"    "SARS.2h.A"    "SARS.2h.B"    "SARS.3h.A"    "SARS.4h.A"   

The inverse of split is merge:

sars.mock <- merge(split.list$SARS,split.list$Mock)
Columns(sars.mock)
 [1] "SARS.no4sU.A" "SARS.1h.A"    "SARS.2h.A"    "SARS.2h.B"    "SARS.3h.A"    "SARS.4h.A"   
 [7] "Mock.no4sU.A" "Mock.1h.A"    "Mock.2h.A"    "Mock.2h.B"    "Mock.3h.A"    "Mock.4h.A"   

Note that we merged such that now we have first the SARS samples and then the Mock samples. We can reorder by slightly abusing subset (note that we actually do not omit any columns, but just define a different order):

mock.sars <- subset(sars.mock,columns = c(7:12,1:6))
Columns(mock.sars)
 [1] "Mock.no4sU.A" "Mock.1h.A"    "Mock.2h.A"    "Mock.2h.B"    "Mock.3h.A"    "Mock.4h.A"   
 [7] "SARS.no4sU.A" "SARS.1h.A"    "SARS.2h.A"    "SARS.2h.B"    "SARS.3h.A"    "SARS.4h.A"   

Gene metadata

Here we see how to work with metadata for genes. The gene metadata essentially is a table that can be retrieved using the GeneInfo function:

head(GeneInfo(sars), 10)
Gene Symbol Length Type
27 ENSG00000197530 MIB2 4247 Cellular
34 ENSG00000117859 OSBPL9 4520 Cellular
35 ENSG00000134717 BTF3L4 4703 Cellular
36 ENSG00000157077 ZFYVE9 5194 Cellular
37 ENSG00000134748 PRPF38A 5274 Cellular
42 ENSG00000168710 AHCYL1 4313 Cellular
44 ENSG00000117114 ADGRL2 6302 Cellular
45 ENSG00000134709 HOOK1 5857 Cellular
46 ENSG00000162599 NFIA 9487 Cellular
47 ENSG00000132849 PATJ 8505 Cellular

Each gene has associated gene ids and symbols. Gene ids and symbols as well as the transcript length are part of the GRAND-SLAM output. The Type column is inferred automatically (see below).

Genes can be identified by the Genes function:

head(Genes(sars), n=20)                          # retrieve the first 20 genes
 [1] "MIB2"      "OSBPL9"    "BTF3L4"    "ZFYVE9"    "PRPF38A"   "AHCYL1"    "ADGRL2"   
 [8] "HOOK1"     "NFIA"      "PATJ"      "VANGL1"    "GPR89B"    "GPSM2"     "ARHGEF10L"
[15] "TMEM50A"   "TMEM57"    "ZNF593"    "RNF207"    "ZNF362"    "STX12"    
head(Genes(sars,use.symbols = FALSE), n=20)      # the first 20 genes, but now use the ids
 [1] "ENSG00000197530" "ENSG00000117859" "ENSG00000134717" "ENSG00000157077" "ENSG00000134748"
 [6] "ENSG00000168710" "ENSG00000117114" "ENSG00000134709" "ENSG00000162599" "ENSG00000132849"
[11] "ENSG00000173218" "ENSG00000188092" "ENSG00000121957" "ENSG00000074964" "ENSG00000183726"
[16] "ENSG00000204178" "ENSG00000142684" "ENSG00000158286" "ENSG00000160094" "ENSG00000117758"
Genes(sars,genes = c("MYC","ORF1ab"),use.symbols = FALSE)    # convert to ids
[1] "ENSG00000136997" "ORF1ab"         
Genes(sars,genes = "YC", regex = TRUE)           # retrieve all genes matching to the regular expression YC
 [1] "NFYC"   "MYCBP"  "PYCR2"  "GLYCTK" "FYCO1"  "CYCS"   "CYC1"   "MYC"    "PYCR3"  "MYCBP2"
[11] "MLYCD"  "PYCR1"  "SYCP2" 

During reading the data into R using ReadGRAND, the Type column is inferred using the ClassifyGenes() function. By default, this will recognize mitochondrial genes (MT prefix of the gene symbol), ERCC spike-ins, and Ensembl gene identifiers (which it will call “cellular”). Here, we also have the viral genes, which are not properly recognized:

table(GeneInfo(sars,"Type"))

Cellular  Unknown 
    9151       11 

If you want to define your own types, you can do this easily be specifying the classify.genes parameter when read in your data:

viral.genes <- c('ORF3a','E','M','ORF6','ORF7a','ORF7b','ORF8','N','ORF10','ORF1ab','S')
sars <- ReadGRAND("https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars.tsv.gz",
                  design=c(Design$Condition,Design$dur.4sU,Design$Replicate),
                  classify.genes = ClassifyGenes(viral=function(gene.info) gene.info$Symbol %in% viral.genes))
Warning: Duplicate gene symbols (n=17, e.g. SPATA13,STPG4,LYNX1,TXNRD3NB,ARL14EPL,SDHD)
present, making unique!
table(GeneInfo(sars,"Type"))

   viral Cellular 
      11    19648 

Note that each parameter to ClassifyGenes must be named (viral) and must be a function that takes the gene metadata table and returns a logical vector.

The ClassifyGenes function has one additional important parameter, which defines how “Unknown” types are supposed to be called. For this data set, a similar behavior as above can be accomplished by:

sars <- ReadGRAND("https://zenodo.org/record/5834034/files/sars.tsv.gz",
                  design=c(Design$Condition,Design$dur.4sU,Design$Replicate),
                  classify.genes = ClassifyGenes(name.unknown = "viral"))
table(GeneInfo(sars,"Type"))

Cellular    viral 
   19648       11 

It is also straight-forward to add additional gene metadata:

GeneInfo(sars,"length.category") <- cut(GeneInfo(sars,"Length"),
                                        breaks=c(0,2000,5000,Inf),
                                        labels = c("Short","Medium","Long"))
table(GeneInfo(sars,"length.category"))

 Short Medium   Long 
  5511   9517   4631 

Column metadata

Samples for bulk experiments and cells in single cell experiments are in grandR jointly called “columns”. The metadata for columns is a table that describes the experimental design we specified when reading in data in grandR. It can be accessed via the Coldata function. We can also see that the duration of 4sU has been interpreted and converted to a numeric value (compare “duration.4sU” with “duration.4sU.original”):

Coldata(sars)
Name Condition Replicate duration.4sU duration.4sU.original no4sU
Mock.no4sU.A Mock.no4sU.A Mock A 0 no4sU TRUE
Mock.1h.A Mock.1h.A Mock A 1 1h FALSE
Mock.2h.A Mock.2h.A Mock A 2 2h FALSE
Mock.2h.B Mock.2h.B Mock B 2 2h FALSE
Mock.3h.A Mock.3h.A Mock A 3 3h FALSE
Mock.4h.A Mock.4h.A Mock A 4 4h FALSE
SARS.no4sU.A SARS.no4sU.A SARS A 0 no4sU TRUE
SARS.1h.A SARS.1h.A SARS A 1 1h FALSE
SARS.2h.A SARS.2h.A SARS A 2 2h FALSE
SARS.2h.B SARS.2h.B SARS B 2 2h FALSE
SARS.3h.A SARS.3h.A SARS A 3 3h FALSE
SARS.4h.A SARS.4h.A SARS A 4 4h FALSE

Additional semantics can also be defined, which is accomplished via the function DesignSemantics, that generates a list for the semantics parameter of the function MakeColdata, which in turn is used to infer metadata from sample names. We briefly explain these mechanisms with an example, but it is important to mention that in most cases, the desired metadata can be added after reading the data, as shown further below.

First, it is important to have a function that takes two parameters (a specific column of the original column metadata table + the name of this column) and returns a dataframe that is then cbinded with the original column metadata table. There is one such predefined function in grandR, which parses labeling durations:

Semantics.time(c("5h","30min","no4sU"),"Test")
Test
5.0
0.5
0.0

We can easily define our own function like this:

my.semantics.time <- function(s,name) {
         r<-Semantics.time(s,name)
         cbind(r,data.frame(hpi=paste0(r[[name]]+3,"hpi")))
}
my.semantics.time(c("5h","30min","no4sU"),"Test")
Test hpi
5.0 8hpi
0.5 3.5hpi
0.0 3hpi

Here, it is important to mention that at 3h post infection, 4sU was added to the cells for 1,2,3 or 4h. The two no4sU samples are also 3h post infection. This function can now be used as semantics parameter for ReadGRAND like this:

sars.meta <- ReadGRAND(system.file("extdata", "sars.tsv.gz", package = "grandR"),
                   design=function(names) 
                     MakeColdata(names,
                                 c("Cell",Design$dur.4sU,Design$Replicate),
                                 semantics=DesignSemantics(duration.4sU=my.semantics.time)
                                 ),
                 verbose=TRUE)
Checking file...
Reading files...
Warning: Duplicate gene symbols (n=1, e.g. MATR3) present, making unique!
Processing...

As mentioned above, it is in most cases easier to add additional metadata after loading.The infection time point can also be added by:

Coldata(sars,"hpi")<-paste0(Coldata(sars,"duration.4sU")+3,"hpi")
Coldata(sars)
Name Condition Replicate duration.4sU duration.4sU.original no4sU hpi
Mock.no4sU.A Mock.no4sU.A Mock A 0 no4sU TRUE 3hpi
Mock.1h.A Mock.1h.A Mock A 1 1h FALSE 4hpi
Mock.2h.A Mock.2h.A Mock A 2 2h FALSE 5hpi
Mock.2h.B Mock.2h.B Mock B 2 2h FALSE 5hpi
Mock.3h.A Mock.3h.A Mock A 3 3h FALSE 6hpi
Mock.4h.A Mock.4h.A Mock A 4 4h FALSE 7hpi
SARS.no4sU.A SARS.no4sU.A SARS A 0 no4sU TRUE 3hpi
SARS.1h.A SARS.1h.A SARS A 1 1h FALSE 4hpi
SARS.2h.A SARS.2h.A SARS A 2 2h FALSE 5hpi
SARS.2h.B SARS.2h.B SARS B 2 2h FALSE 5hpi
SARS.3h.A SARS.3h.A SARS A 3 3h FALSE 6hpi
SARS.4h.A SARS.4h.A SARS A 4 4h FALSE 7hpi

There are also some build-in grandR functions that add metadata, such as ComputeExpressionPercentage:

sars <- ComputeExpressionPercentage(sars,name = "viral_percentage",
                                    genes = GeneInfo(sars,"Type")=="viral")
ggplot(Coldata(sars),aes(Name,viral_percentage))+
  geom_bar(stat="identity")+
  RotatateAxisLabels()+
  xlab(NULL)

Interestingly the 4sU-naive sample shows more viral gene expression, suggesting that 4sU had an effect on viral gene expression.

Since this is such an important control, there is also a specialized plotting function built into grandR for that:

PlotTypeDistribution(sars,relative = TRUE)

There is a column in the Coldata metadata table that has a special meaning: Condition. It is used by many functions as a default, e.g. to plot colors in the PCA or to model kinetics per conditions. It can be accessed by it’s own function:

Condition(sars)
 [1] Mock Mock Mock Mock Mock Mock SARS SARS SARS SARS SARS SARS
Levels: Mock SARS

and it can be set either directly:

Coldata(sars,"saved")<-Condition(sars)                  # save it for later use!
Condition(sars)<-rep(c("control","infected"),each=6)    # set new conditions directly
Coldata(sars)
Name Condition Replicate duration.4sU duration.4sU.original no4sU hpi viral_percentage saved
Mock.no4sU.A Mock.no4sU.A control A 0 no4sU TRUE 3hpi 0.3188959 Mock
Mock.1h.A Mock.1h.A control A 1 1h FALSE 4hpi 0.2562894 Mock
Mock.2h.A Mock.2h.A control A 2 2h FALSE 5hpi 0.3261652 Mock
Mock.2h.B Mock.2h.B control B 2 2h FALSE 5hpi 0.2571997 Mock
Mock.3h.A Mock.3h.A control A 3 3h FALSE 6hpi 0.2354163 Mock
Mock.4h.A Mock.4h.A control A 4 4h FALSE 7hpi 0.2294342 Mock
SARS.no4sU.A SARS.no4sU.A infected A 0 no4sU TRUE 3hpi 90.0177227 SARS
SARS.1h.A SARS.1h.A infected A 1 1h FALSE 4hpi 49.9487279 SARS
SARS.2h.A SARS.2h.A infected A 2 2h FALSE 5hpi 74.7904731 SARS
SARS.2h.B SARS.2h.B infected B 2 2h FALSE 5hpi 78.2874060 SARS
SARS.3h.A SARS.3h.A infected A 3 3h FALSE 6hpi 82.4704774 SARS
SARS.4h.A SARS.4h.A infected A 4 4h FALSE 7hpi 84.7068470 SARS

or from one or several columns of the metadata (here this this not really reasonable, but there are situations where combining more than one metadata column makes sense):

Condition(sars)<-c("saved","Replicate")   # set it by combining to other columns from the Coldata
Condition(sars)
 [1] Mock.A Mock.A Mock.A Mock.B Mock.A Mock.A SARS.A SARS.A SARS.A SARS.B SARS.A SARS.A
Levels: Mock.A SARS.A Mock.B SARS.B
Condition(sars)<-"saved"                  # set it to one other column from the Coldata
Condition(sars)
 [1] Mock Mock Mock Mock Mock Mock SARS SARS SARS SARS SARS SARS
Levels: Mock SARS