Contents

Paul J. McMurdie and Susan Holmes

mcmurdie@stanford.edu

phyloseq Home Page

If you find phyloseq and/or its tutorials useful, please acknowledge and cite phyloseq in your publications:

phyloseq: An R package for reproducible interactive analysis and graphics of microbiome census data (2013) PLoS ONE 8(4):e61217 http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0061217

0.1 Other resources

The phyloseq project also has a number of supporting online resources, most of which can by found at the phyloseq home page, or from the phyloseq stable release page on Bioconductor.

To post feature requests or ask for help, try the phyloseq Issue Tracker.

1 Introduction

The analysis of microbiological communities brings many challenges: the integration of many different types of data with methods from ecology, genetics, phylogenetics, network analysis, visualization and testing. The data itself may originate from widely different sources, such as the microbiomes of humans, soils, surface and ocean waters, wastewater treatment plants, industrial facilities, and so on; and as a result, these varied sample types may have very different forms and scales of related data that is extremely dependent upon the experiment and its question(s). The phyloseq package is a tool to import, store, analyze, and graphically display complex phylogenetic sequencing data that has already been clustered into Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs), especially when there is associated sample data, phylogenetic tree, and/or taxonomic assignment of the OTUs. This package leverages many of the tools available in R for ecology and phylogenetic analysis (vegan, ade4, ape, picante), while also using advanced/flexible graphic systems (ggplot2) to easily produce publication-quality graphics of complex phylogenetic data. phyloseq uses a specialized system of S4 classes to store all related phylogenetic sequencing data as single experiment-level object, making it easier to share data and reproduce analyses. In general, phyloseq seeks to facilitate the use of R for efficient interactive and reproducible analysis of OTU-clustered high-throughput phylogenetic sequencing data.

2 About this vignette

2.1 Typesetting Legend

  • bold - Bold is used for emphasis.
  • italics - Italics are used for package names, and special words, phrases.
  • code font - The font for code, usually courrier-like, but depends on the theme.
  • myFun() - Code font word with () attached at the right-end, is a function name.
  • Hyperlink - Hyperlinks are clickable text that will jump to sections and external pages.

3 phyloseq classes

The class structure in the phyloseq package follows the inheritance diagram shown in the figure below. Currently, phyloseq uses 4 core data classes. They are (1) the OTU abundance table (otu_table), a table of sample data (sample_data); (2) a table of taxonomic descriptors (taxonomyTable); and (3) a phylogenetic tree ("phylo"-class, ape package.

The otu_table class can be considered the central data type, as it directly represents the number and type of sequences observed in each sample. otu_table extends the numeric matrix class in the R base, and has a few additonal feature slots. The most important of these feature slots is the taxa_are_rows slot, which holds a single logical that indicates whether the table is oriented with taxa as rows (as in the genefilter package in Bioconductor or with taxa as columns (as in vegan and picante packages). In phyloseq methods, as well as its extensions of methods in other packages, the taxa_are_rows value is checked to ensure proper orientation of the otu_table. A phyloseq user is only required to specify the otu_table orientation during initialization, following which all handling is internal.

The sample_data class directly inherits R’s data.frame class, and thus effectively stores both categorical and numerical data about each sample. The orientation of a data.frame in this context requires that samples/trials are rows, and variables are columns (consistent with vegan and other packages). The taxonomyTable class directly inherits the matrix class, and is oriented such that rows are taxa/OTUs and columns are taxonomic levels (e.g. Phylum).

The phyloseq-class can be considered an “experiment-level class” and should contain two or more of the previously-described core data classes. We assume that phyloseq users will be interested in analyses that utilize their abundance counts derived from the phylogenetic sequencing data, and so the phyloseq() constructor will stop with an error if the arguments do not include an otu_table. There are a number of common methods that require either an otu_table and sample_data combination, or an otu_table and phylogenetic tree combination. These methods can operate on instances of the phyloseq-class, and will stop with an error if the required component data is missing.

phyloseq class structure Classes and inheritance in the phyloseq package. The class name and its slots are shown with red- or blue-shaded text, respectively. Coercibility is indicated graphically by arrows with the coercion function shown. Lines without arrows indicate that the more complex class (``phyloseq“) contains a slot with the associated data class as its components.

4 Load phyloseq and import data

Now let’s get started by loading phyloseq, and describing some methods for importing data.

4.1 Load phyloseq

To use phyloseq in a new R session, it will have to be loaded. This can be done in your package manager, or at the command line using the library() command:

library("phyloseq")

4.2 Import data

An important feature of phyloseq are methods for importing phylogenetic sequencing data from common taxonomic clustering pipelines. These methods take file pathnames as input, read and parse those files, and return a single object that contains all of the data.

Some additional background details are provided below. The best reproducible examples on importing data with phyloseq can be found on the official data import tutorial page:

http://joey711.github.com/phyloseq/import-data

4.3 Import from biom-format

New versions of QIIME (see below) produce a file in version 2 of the biom file format, which is a specialized definition of the HDF5 format.

The phyloseq package provides the import_biom() function, which can import both Version 1 (JSON) and Version 2 (HDF5) of the BIOM file format.

The phyloseq package fully supports both taxa and sample observations of the biom format standard, and works with the BIOM files output from QIIME, RDP, MG-RAST, etc.

4.4 Import from QIIME (Modern)

The default output from modern versions of QIIME is a BIOM-format file (among others). This is suppored in phyloseq.

4.4.1 Sample data from QIIME

Sometimes inaccurately referred to as metadata, additional observations on samples provided as mapping file to QIIME have not typically been output in the BIOM files, even though BIOM format supports it. This failure to support the full capability of the BIOM format means that you’ll have to provide sample observations as a separate file. There are many ways to do this, but the QIIME sample map is supported.

4.4.2 Input

Two QIIME output files (.biom, .tre) are recognized by the import_biom() function. One QIIME input file (sample map, tab-delimited), is recognized by the import_qiime_sample_data() function.

The objects created by each of the import functions above should be merged using merge_phyloseq to create one coordinated, self-consistent object.

4.4.3 Output

  • Before Merging - Before merging with merge_phyloseq, the output from these import activities is the three separate objects listed in the previous table.
  • After Merging - After merging you have a single self-consistent phyloseq object that contains an OTU table, taxonomy table, sample-data, and a phylogenetic tree.

4.4.4 QIIME Example Tutorial

QIIME’s “Moving Pictures” example tutorial output is a little too large to include within the phyloseq package (and thus is not directly included in this vignette). However, the phyloseq home page includes a full reproducible example of the import procedure described above:

Link HERE

For reference, or if you want to try yourself, the following is the relative paths within the QIIME tutorial directory for each of the files you will need.

  • BIOM file, originally at: moving_pictures_tutorial-1.9.0/illumina/precomputed-output/otus/otu_table_mc2_w_tax_no_pynast_failures.biom
  • Tree file, originally at: moving_pictures_tutorial-1.9.0/illumina/precomputed-output/otus/rep_set.tre
  • Map File, originally at: moving_pictures_tutorial-1.9.0/illumina/map.tsv

4.5 Import from QIIME Legacy

QIIME is a free, open-source OTU clustering and analysis pipeline written for Unix (mostly Linux). It is distributed in a number of different forms (including a pre-installed virtual machine). See the QIIME home page for details.

4.5.1 Input

One QIIME input file (sample map), and two QIIME output files (otu_table.txt, .tre) are recognized by the import_qiime() function. Only one of the three input files is required to run, although an "otu_table.txt" file is required if import_qiime() is to return a complete experiment object.

In practice, you will have to find the relevant QIIME files among a number of other files created by the QIIME pipeline. A screenshot of the directory structure created during a typical QIIME run is shown in the QIIME Directory Figure.

QIIME directory structure A typical QIIME output directory. The two output files suitable for import by phyloseq are highlighted. A third file describing the samples, their barcodes and covariates, is created by the user and required as input to QIIME. It is a good idea to import this file, as it can be converted directly to a sample_data object and can be extremely useful for certain analyses.

4.5.2 Output

The class of the object returned by import_qiime() depends upon which filenames are provided. The most comprehensive class is chosen automatically, based on the input files listed as arguments. At least one argument needs to be provided.

4.6 Import from mothur

The open-source, platform-independent, locally-installed software package, mothur, can also process barcoded amplicon sequences and perform OTU-clustering. It is extensively documented on the mothur wiki

4.6.1 Input

Currently, there are three different files produced by the mothur package (Ver 1.22+) that can be imported by phyloseq. At minimum, a user must supply a “.list” file, and at least one of the following two files: .groups or .tree. The group file is produced by mothur’s make.group() function. Details can be found at its wiki page. The tree file is a phylogenetic tree calculated by mothur.

4.6.2 Output

The output from import_mothur() depends on which file types are provided. If all three file types are provided, an instance of the phyloseq-class is returned that contains both an OTU abundance table and its associated phylogenetic tree.

4.7 Import from PyroTagger

PyroTagger is an OTU-clustering pipeline for barcoded 16S rRNA amplicon sequences, served and maintained by the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Joint Genome Institute (JGI). It can be used through a straightforward web interface at the PyroTagger home page

PyroTagger takes as input the untrimmed sequence (.fasta) and sequence-quality (.qual) files, as well as a sample mapping file that contains the bar code sequence for each sample and its name. It uses a 97% identity threshold for defining OTU clusters (approximately species-level of taxonomic distinction), and provides no options for specifying otherwise. It does allow users to modify the threshold setting for low-quality bases.

4.7.1 Input

PyroTagger returns a single excel spreadsheet file (.xls) containing both abundance and taxonomy data, as well as some associated confidence information related to each taxonomic assignment. This spreadsheet also reports on potential chimeric sequences. This single output file is sufficient for import_RDP_tab(), provided the file has been converted to a tab-delimited plain-text format. Any spreadsheet application should suffice. No other changes should be made to the .xls file.

4.7.2 Output

import_RDP_tab() returns an instance of the phyloseq-class that contains the OTU abundance table and taxonomy table. To my knowledge, PyroTagger does not calculate a tree of the representative sequences from each OTU cluster, nor a distance object, so analyses like tip_glom() and UniFrac are not applicable.

4.8 Import from RDP pipeline

The Ribosomal Database Project (RDP) provides a web-based barcoded 16S rRNA amplicon sequence processing pipeline called the RDP Pyrosequencing Pipeline. A user must run all three of the “Data Processing” steps sequentially through the web interface in order to acquire the output from Complete Linkage Clustering, the approach to OTU clustering used by the RDP Pipeline. Note that this import function assumes that the sequence names in the resulting cluster file follow a particular naming convention with underscore delimiter (see below).

4.8.1 Input

The output from the Complete Linkage Clustering, .clust, is the only input to the RDP pipeline importer:

myOTU1 <- import_RDP_cluster("path/to/my/filename.clust")

4.8.2 Output

This importer returns an otu_table object.

4.8.3 Expected Naming Convention

The RDP cluster pipeline (specifically, the output of the complete linkage clustering step) has no formal documentation for the “.clust” file structure or its apparent sequence naming convention.

The cluster file itself contains the names of all sequences contained in the input alignment. If the upstream barcode and aligment processing steps are also done with the RDP pipeline, then the sequence names follow a predictable naming convention wherein each sequence is named by its sample and sequence ID, separated by a "_" as delimiter:

sampleName_sequenceIDnumber

This import function assumes that the sequence names in the cluster file follow this convention, and that the sample name does not contain any "_". It is unlikely to work if this is not the case. It is likely to work if you used the upstream steps in the RDP pipeline to process your raw (barcoded, untrimmed) fasta/fastq data.

4.9 Example Data (included)

There are multiple example data sets included in phyloseq. Many are from published investigations and include documentation with a summary and references, as well as some example code representing some aspect of analysis available in phyloseq. In the package index, go to the names beginning with “data-” to see the documentation of currently available example datasets.

To load example data into the working environment, use the data() command:

data(GlobalPatterns)
data(esophagus)
data(enterotype)
data(soilrep)

Similarly, entering ?enterotype will reveal the documentation for the so-called “enterotype” dataset. For details examples, see the Example Data tutorial

4.10 phyloseq Object Summaries

In small font, the following is the summary of the GlobalPatterns dataset that prints to the terminal. These summaries are consistent among all phyloseq-class objects. Although the components of GlobalPatterns have many thousands of elements, the command-line returns only a short summary of each component. This encourages you to check that an object is still what you expect, without needing to let thousands of elements scroll across the terminal. In the cases in which you do want to see more of a particular component, use an accessor function (see table below).

data(GlobalPatterns)
GlobalPatterns
## phyloseq-class experiment-level object
## otu_table()   OTU Table:         [ 19216 taxa and 26 samples ]
## sample_data() Sample Data:       [ 26 samples by 7 sample variables ]
## tax_table()   Taxonomy Table:    [ 19216 taxa by 7 taxonomic ranks ]
## phy_tree()    Phylogenetic Tree: [ 19216 tips and 19215 internal nodes ]

4.11 Convert raw data to phyloseq components

Suppose you have already imported raw data from an experiment into R, and their indices are labeled correctly. How do you get phyloseq to recognize these tables as the appropriate class of data? And further combine them together? Table Table of Component Constructor Functions lists key functions for converting these core data formats into specific component data objects recognized by phyloseq. These will also

Table of component constructor functions for building component data objects

phyloseq constructors: functions for building/merging phyloseq objects.

The following example illustrates using the constructor methods for component data tables.

otu1 <- otu_table(raw_abundance_matrix, taxa_are_rows=FALSE)
sam1 <- sample_data(raw_sample_data.frame) 
tax1 <- tax_table(raw_taxonomy_matrix)
tre1 <- read_tree(my_tree_file)

4.12 phyloseq() function: building complex phyloseq objects

Once you’ve converted the data tables to their appropriate class, combining them into one object requires only one additional function call, phyloseq():

ex1b <- phyloseq(my_otu_table, my_sample_data, my_taxonomyTable, my_tree)

You do not need to have all four data types in the example above in order to combine them into one validity-checked experiment-level phyloseq-class object. The phyloseq() method will detect which component data classes are present, and build accordingly. Downstream analysis methods will access the required components using phyloseq’s accessors, and throw an error if something is missing. For most downstream methods you will only need to supply the combined, phyloseq-class object (the output of phyloseq() ), usually as the first argument.

ex1c <- phyloseq(my_otu_table, my_sample_data)

Whenever an instance of the phyloseq-class is created by phyloseq — for example, when we use the import_qiime() function to import data, or combine manually imported tables using phyloseq() — the row and column indices representing taxa or samples are internally checked/trimmed for compatibility, such that all component data describe exactly (and only) the same OTUs and samples.

4.13 Merge

The phyloseq project includes support for two complete different categories of merging.

  • Merging the OTUs or samples in a phyloseq object, based upon a taxonomic or sample variable: merge_samples(), merge_taxa()
  • Merging two or more data objects that come from the same experiment, so that their data becomes part of the same phyloseq object: merge_phyloseq()

For further details, see the reproducible online tutorial at:

http://joey711.github.com/phyloseq/merge

5 Accessor functions

Once you have a phyloseq object available, many accessor functions are available to query aspects of the data set. The function name and its purpose are summarized in the Accessor Functions Table.

Accessor functions for phyloseq objects.

6 Trimming, subsetting, filtering phyloseq data

6.1 Trimming: prune_taxa()

Trimming high-throughput phylogenetic sequencing data can be useful, or even necessary, for certain types of analyses. However, it is important that the original data always be available for reference and reproducibility; and that the methods used for trimming be transparent to others, so they can perform the same trimming or filtering steps on the same or related data. To facilitate this, phyloseq contains many ways to trim/filter the data from a phylogenetic sequencing project. Because matching indices for taxa and samples is strictly enforced, subsetting one of the data components automatically subsets the corresponding indices from the others. Variables holding trimmed versions of your original data can be declared, and further trimmed, without losing track of the original data.

In general, most trimming should be accomplished using the S4 methods prune_taxa() or prune_samples().

6.2 Simple filtering example

For example, lets make a new object that only holds the most abundant 20 taxa in the experiment. To accomplish this, we will use the prune_taxa() function.

data(GlobalPatterns)
most_abundant_taxa <- sort(taxa_sums(GlobalPatterns), TRUE)[1:topN]
ex2 <- prune_taxa(names(most_abundant_taxa), GlobalPatterns)

Now we can ask the question, “what taxonomic Family are these OTUs?” (Subsetting still returns a taxonomyTable object, which is summarized. We will need to convert to a vector)

topFamilies <- tax_table(ex2)[, "Family"]
as(topFamilies, "vector")
##  [1] NA                   "ACK-M1"             "ACK-M1"            
##  [4] "Bifidobacteriaceae" NA                   NA                  
##  [7] "Nostocaceae"        NA                   "Neisseriaceae"     
## [10] "Neisseriaceae"      "Pasteurellaceae"    "Enterobacteriaceae"
## [13] "Bacteroidaceae"     "Bacteroidaceae"     "Bacteroidaceae"    
## [16] "Clostridiaceae"     "Ruminococcaceae"    "Ruminococcaceae"   
## [19] "Ruminococcaceae"    "Streptococcaceae"

6.3 Arbitrarily complex abundance filtering

The previous example was a relatively simple filtering in which we kept only the most abundant 20 in the whole experiment. But what if we wanted to keep the most abundant 20 taxa of each sample? And of those, keep only the taxa that are also found in at least one-third of our samples? What if we wanted to keep only those taxa that met some across-sample criteria?

6.3.1 genefilter_sample(): Filter by Within-Sample Criteria

For this more complicated filtering phyloseq contains a function, genefilter_sample, that takes as an argument a phyloseq object, as well as a list of one or more filtering functions that will be applied to each sample in the abundance matrix (otu_table), as well as an integer argument, A, that specifies for how many samples the filtering function must return TRUE for a particular taxa to avoid removal from the object. A supporting function filterfun_sample is also included in phyloseq to facilitate creating a properly formatted function (enclosure) if more than one function is going to be applied simultaneously. genefilter_sample returns a logical vector suitable for sending directly to prune_taxa for the actual trimming.

Here is an example on a completely fabricated otu_table called testOTU.

testOTU <- otu_table(matrix(sample(1:50, 25, replace=TRUE), 5, 5), taxa_are_rows=FALSE)
f1<- filterfun_sample(topk(2))
wh1 <- genefilter_sample(testOTU, f1, A=2)
wh2 <- c(T, T, T, F, F)
prune_taxa(wh1, testOTU)
prune_taxa(wh2, testOTU)

Here is a second example using the included dataset, GlobalPatterns. The most abundant taxa are kept only if they are in the most abundant 10% of taxa in at least half of the samples in dataset GlobalPatterns. Note that it is not necessary to subset GlobalPatterns in order to do this filtering. The S4 method prune_taxa subsets each of the relavent component objects, and returns the complex object back.

data(GlobalPatterns)
f1<- filterfun_sample(topp(0.1))
wh1 <- genefilter_sample(GlobalPatterns, f1, A=(1/2*nsamples(GlobalPatterns)))
sum(wh1)
## [1] 795
ex2 <- prune_taxa(wh1, GlobalPatterns)
print(ex2)
## phyloseq-class experiment-level object
## otu_table()   OTU Table:         [ 795 taxa and 26 samples ]
## sample_data() Sample Data:       [ 26 samples by 7 sample variables ]
## tax_table()   Taxonomy Table:    [ 795 taxa by 7 taxonomic ranks ]
## phy_tree()    Phylogenetic Tree: [ 795 tips and 794 internal nodes ]

If instead of the most abundant fraction of taxa, you are interested in the most abundant fraction of individuals (aka sequences, observations), then the topf function is appropriate. For steep rank-abundance curves, topf will seem to be much more conservative (trim more taxa) because it is based on the cumulative sum of relative abundance. It does not guarantee that a certain number or fraction of total taxa (richness) will be retained.

data(GlobalPatterns)
f1<- filterfun_sample(topf(0.9))
wh1 <- genefilter_sample(GlobalPatterns, f1, A=(1/3*nsamples(GlobalPatterns)))
sum(wh1)
prune_taxa(wh1, GlobalPatterns)

6.3.2 filter_taxa(): Filter by Across-Sample Criteria

The filter_taxa function is directly analogous to the genefilter function for microarray filtering, but is used for filtering OTUs from phyloseq objects. It applies an arbitrary set of functions – as a function list, for instance, created by genefilter::filterfun – as across-sample criteria, one OTU at a time. It can be thought of as an extension of the genefilter-package (from the Bioconductor repository) for phyloseq objects. It takes as input a phyloseq object, and returns a logical vector indicating whether or not each OTU passed the criteria. Alternatively, if the prune option is set to FALSE, it returns the already-trimmed version of the phyloseq object.

Inspect the following example. Note that the functions genefilter and kOverA are from the genefilter package.

data("enterotype")
library("genefilter")
flist<- filterfun(kOverA(5, 2e-05))
ent.logi <- filter_taxa(enterotype, flist)
ent.trim <- filter_taxa(enterotype, flist, TRUE)
identical(ent.trim, prune_taxa(ent.logi, enterotype)) 
## [1] TRUE
identical(sum(ent.logi), ntaxa(ent.trim))
## [1] TRUE
filter_taxa(enterotype, flist, TRUE)
## phyloseq-class experiment-level object
## otu_table()   OTU Table:         [ 416 taxa and 280 samples ]
## sample_data() Sample Data:       [ 280 samples by 9 sample variables ]
## tax_table()   Taxonomy Table:    [ 416 taxa by 1 taxonomic ranks ]

6.4 subset_samples(): Subset by Sample Variables

It is possible to subset the samples in a phyloseq object based on the sample variables using the subset_samples() function. For example to subset GlobalPatterns such that only certain environments are retained, the following line is needed (the related tables are subsetted automatically as well):

ex3 <- subset_samples(GlobalPatterns, SampleType%in%c("Freshwater", "Ocean", "Freshwater (creek)"))
ex3
## phyloseq-class experiment-level object
## otu_table()   OTU Table:         [ 19216 taxa and 8 samples ]
## sample_data() Sample Data:       [ 8 samples by 7 sample variables ]
## tax_table()   Taxonomy Table:    [ 19216 taxa by 7 taxonomic ranks ]
## phy_tree()    Phylogenetic Tree: [ 19216 tips and 19215 internal nodes ]

For this example only a categorical variable is shown, but in principle a continuous variable could be specified and a logical expression provided just as for the subset function. In fact, because sample_data component objects are an extension of the data.frame class, they can also be subsetted with the subset function:

subset(sample_data(GlobalPatterns), SampleType%in%c("Freshwater", "Ocean", "Freshwater (creek)"))
##          X.SampleID  Primer Final_Barcode Barcode_truncated_plus_T
## LMEpi24M   LMEpi24M ILBC_13        ACACTG                   CAGTGT
## SLEpi20M   SLEpi20M ILBC_15        ACAGAG                   CTCTGT
## AQC1cm       AQC1cm ILBC_16        ACAGCA                   TGCTGT
## AQC4cm       AQC4cm ILBC_17        ACAGCT                   AGCTGT
## AQC7cm       AQC7cm ILBC_18        ACAGTG                   CACTGT
## NP2             NP2 ILBC_19        ACAGTT                   AACTGT
## NP3             NP3 ILBC_20        ACATCA                   TGATGT
## NP5             NP5 ILBC_21        ACATGA                   TCATGT
##          Barcode_full_length         SampleType
## LMEpi24M         CATGAACAGTG         Freshwater
## SLEpi20M         AGCCGACTCTG         Freshwater
## AQC1cm           GACCACTGCTG Freshwater (creek)
## AQC4cm           CAAGCTAGCTG Freshwater (creek)
## AQC7cm           ATGAAGCACTG Freshwater (creek)
## NP2              TCGCGCAACTG              Ocean
## NP3              GCTAAGTGATG              Ocean
## NP5              GAACGATCATG              Ocean
##                                           Description
## LMEpi24M Lake Mendota Minnesota, 24 meter epilimnion 
## SLEpi20M Sparkling Lake Wisconsin, 20 meter eplimnion
## AQC1cm                   Allequash Creek, 0-1cm depth
## AQC4cm                  Allequash Creek, 3-4 cm depth
## AQC7cm                  Allequash Creek, 6-7 cm depth
## NP2            Newport Pier, CA surface water, Time 1
## NP3            Newport Pier, CA surface water, Time 2
## NP5            Newport Pier, CA surface water, Time 3

6.5 subset_taxa(): subset by taxonomic categories

It is possible to subset by specific taxonomic category using the subset_taxa() function. For example, if we wanted to subset GlobalPatterns so that it only contains data regarding the phylum Firmicutes:

ex4 <- subset_taxa(GlobalPatterns, Phylum=="Firmicutes")
ex4
## phyloseq-class experiment-level object
## otu_table()   OTU Table:         [ 4356 taxa and 26 samples ]
## sample_data() Sample Data:       [ 26 samples by 7 sample variables ]
## tax_table()   Taxonomy Table:    [ 4356 taxa by 7 taxonomic ranks ]
## phy_tree()    Phylogenetic Tree: [ 4356 tips and 4355 internal nodes ]

6.6 random subsample abundance data

Can also randomly subset, for example a random subset of 100 taxa from the full dataset.

randomSpecies100 <- sample(taxa_names(GlobalPatterns), 100, replace=FALSE)
ex5 <- prune_taxa(randomSpecies100, GlobalPatterns)

7 Transform abundance data

Sample-wise transformation can be achieved with the transform_sample_counts() function. It requires two arguments, (1) the phyloseq object that you want to transform, and the function that you want to use to perform the transformation. Any arbitrary function can be provided as the second argument, as long as it returns a numeric vector with the same length as its input. In the following trivial example, we create a second object, ex2, that has been “transformed” by the identity function such that it is actually identical to GlobalPatterns.

data(GlobalPatterns)
ex2 <- transform_sample_counts(GlobalPatterns, I)

For certain kinds of analyis we may want to transform the abundance data. For example, for RDA we want to transform abundance counts to within-sample ranks, and to further include a threshold beyond which all taxa receive the same rank value. The ranking for each sample is performed independently, so that the rank of a particular taxa within a particular sample is not influenced by that sample’s total quantity of sequencing relative to the other samples in the project.

The following example shows how to perform such a thresholded-rank transformation of the abundance table in the complex phyloseq object GlobalPatterns with an arbitrary threshold of 500.

ex4<- transform_sample_counts(GlobalPatterns, threshrankfun(500))

8 Phylogenetic smoothing

8.1 tax_glom()

Suppose we are skeptical about the importance of OTU-level distinctions in our dataset. For this scenario, phyloseq includes a taxonomic-agglommeration method,tax_glom(), which merges taxa of the same taxonomic category for a user-specified taxonomic level. In the following code, we merge all taxa of the same Genus, and store that new object as ex6.

ex6 <- tax_glom(GlobalPatterns, taxlevel="Genus")

8.2 tip_glom()

Similarly, our original example object (GlobalPatterns) also contains a phlyogenetic tree corresponding to each OTU, which we could also use as a means to merge taxa in our dataset that are closely related. In this case, we specify a threshold patristic distance. Taxa more closely related than this threshold are merged. This is especially useful when a dataset has many taxa that lack a taxonomic assignment at the level you want to investigate, a problem when using tax_glom(). Note that for datasets with a large number of taxa, tax_glom will be noticeably faster than tip_glom. Also, keep in mind that tip_glom requires that its first argument be an object that contains a tree, while tax_glom instead requires a taxonomyTable (See phyloseq classes).

ex7 <- tip_glom(GlobalPatterns, speciationMinLength = 0.05)

Command output not provided here to save time during compilation of the vignette. The user is encouraged to try this out on your dataset, or even this example, if interested. It may take a while to run on the full, untrimmed data.

9 Installation

9.1 Installation

Please check the phyloseq installation tutorial for help with installation. This is likely to be the first place news and updated information about installation will be posted, as well. Also check out the rest of the phyloseq homepage on GitHub, as this is the best place to post issues, bug reports, feature requests, contribute code, etc.

9.2 Installing Parallel Backend

For running parallel implementation of functions/methods in phyloseq (e.g. UniFrac(GlobalPatterns, parallel=TRUE)), you will need also to install a function for registering a parallel “backend”. Only one working parallel backend is needed, but there are several options, and the best one will depend on the details of your particular system. The “doParallel” package is a good place to start. Any one of the following lines from an R session will install a backend package.

install.packages("doParallel")
install.packages("doMC")
install.packages("doSNOW")
install.packages("doMPI")

10 References

Robert C Gentleman, Vincent J. Carey, Douglas M. Bates, et al. Bioconductor: Open software development for computational biology and bioinformatics. Genome Biology 5:R80, 2004.

J Gregory Caporaso, Justin Kuczynski, Jesse Stombaugh, Kyle Bittinger, Frederic D Bushman QIIME allows analysis of high-throughput community sequencing data. Nature Methods 7(5):335-336, 2010.

P D Schloss, S L Westcott, T Ryabin, J R Hall, M Hartmann, et al. Introducing mothur: Open-Source, Platform-Independent, Community-Supported Software for Describing and Comparing Microbial Communities. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 75(23):7537-7541, 2009.

J R Cole, Q Wang, E Cardenas, J Fish, B Chai et al. The Ribosomal Database Project: improved alignments and new tools for rRNA analysis. Nucleic Acids Research 37(Database issue):D141-5, 2009.