edgeR error for paired differential expression analysis

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1

I am trying to use edgeR to perform a differential expression analysis. This is a paired analysis (samples are in pairs - their healthy vs their diseased tissues).

Galaxy Tool ID: toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/repos/iuc/edger/edger/3.20.7.2
Galaxy Tool Version: 3.20.7.2
Tool Version: R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30) – “Single Candle”, edgeR version 3.20.7, limma version 3.34.9, scales version 0.5.0, rjson version 0.2.15, getopt version 1.20.0

I have 2 input files. The first is input-counts.txt and looks like so:

GeneID  M1  M4  M7 M10 M13  N1  N4  N7 N10 N13
gene1    0   0   0   0   4   0   0   1   0   0
gene2  589 602 646 403 390 204 357 511 266 387
gene3    5   5   7   4   8   0   2  13   2   5
gene5    1   1   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
gene6    0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
gene7    0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
etc

My factor file looks as such:

   Sample Patient Tissue
1      M1       1      M
2      M4       4      M
3      M7       7      M
4     M10      10      M
5     M13      13      M
6      N1       1      N
7      N4       4      N
8      N7       7      N
9     N10      10      N
10    N13      13      N

The aim of my analysis is to detect genes differentially
expressed between affected (M) and normal skin (N), adjusting for any differences between the patients.

In the edgeR window in Galaxy, in “Contrast” of interest", I have written: M-N.

However, edgeR doesn’t run and I get the following error:

Fatal error: Exit code 1 () Error in makeContrasts(contrasts = contrastData, levels = design) : The levels must by syntactically valid names in R, see help(make.names). Non-valid names:

I am confused as to what to do. I made this file in R. I have tried changing the levels() in R and I have tried putting “Tissue” in the second column but I still get the error each time.

Any help would be deeply appreciated.

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2

Seems I have found the problem. Despite Galaxy saying “NOTE: Please only use letters, numbers or underscores” when inputing factors manually, it seems you can’t use numbers for Groups when you use a factor file instead of manual input.

Screenshot%20from%202019-02-01%2014-47-24
Screenshot from 2019-02-01 14-47-24.png901×415 25.3 KB

Indeed, when I changed my file to the following, it worked. I added an X in front of the Patient numbers.

Sample Tissue Patient
M1 M X1
M4 M X4
M7 M X7
M10 M X10
M13 M X13
N1 N X1
N4 N X4
N7 N X7
N10 N X10
N13 N X13
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3

Correct - Starting factor labels/names with a number or underscore, even through GUI form, causes problems. Glad you figured out the issue & thanks for posting back.

4

Hi @m93, as Jen said, R generally doesn’t like variables to start with numbers. I’ve submitted a change to try to clarify the naming in the edgeR tool help here: https://github.com/galaxyproject/tools-iuc/pull/2284. Thanks for reporting the issue!

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