Simplify Functional Enrichment Results

Simplify GO enrichment results

The major use case for simplifyEnrichment is for simplying the GO enrichment results by clustering the corresponding semantic similarity matrix of the significant GO terms. To demonstrate the usage, we first generate a list of random GO IDs from the Biological Process (BP) ontology category:

library(simplifyEnrichment)
set.seed(888)
go_id = random_GO(500)

simplifyEnrichment starts with the GO similarity matrix. Users can use their own similarity matrices or use the GO_similarity() function to calculate the semantic similarity matrix. The GO_similarity() function is simply a wrapper on GOSemSim::termSim(). The function accepts a vector of GO IDs. Note the GO terms should only belong to one same ontology (i.e., BP, CC or MF).

mat = GO_similarity(go_id)

By default, GO_similarity() uses Rel method in GOSemSim::termSim(). Other methods to calculate GO similarities can be set by measure argument, e.g.:

GO_similarity(go_id, measure = "Wang")

With the similarity matrix mat, users can directly apply simplifyGO() function to perform the clustering as well as visualizing the results.

df = simplifyGO(mat)

## Cluster 500 terms by 'binary_cut'... 43 clusters, used 1.914086 secs.

On the right side of the heatmap there are the word cloud annotations which summarize the functions with keywords in every GO cluster. Note there is no word cloud for the cluster that is merged from small clusters (size < 5).

The returned variable df is a data frame with GO IDs, GO terms and the cluster labels:

head(df)

##           id                                           term cluster
## 1 GO:0003283                      atrial septum development       1
## 2 GO:0022018 lateral ganglionic eminence cell proliferation       1
## 3 GO:0030032                         lamellipodium assembly       2
## 4 GO:0061508                            CDP phosphorylation       3
## 5 GO:1901222          regulation of NIK/NF-kappaB signaling       4
## 6 GO:0060164 regulation of timing of neuron differentiation       1

The size of GO clusters can be retrieved by:

sort(table(df$cluster))

## 
##   5   7   8  10  12  13  17  18  21  22  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33 
##   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1 
##  34  35  36  37  38  39  40  41  42  43  20  23   9  16  19  15  14  11   2   6 
##   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   2   2   3   5   5   6  10  12  37  45 
##   4   1   3 
##  97 114 132

Or split the data frame by the cluster labels:

split(df, df$cluster)

plot argument can be set to FALSE in simplifyGO(), so that no plot is generated and only the data frame is returned.

If the aim is only to cluster GO terms, binary_cut() or cluster_terms() functions can be directly applied:

binary_cut(mat)

##   [1]  1  1  2  3  4  1  2  3  1  3  5  6  1  3  1  3  6  7  3  3  4  8  4  4  1
##  [26]  1  3  6  3  1  4  3  3  2  3  4  3  4  4  2  2  4  6  6  9  2  6  2  2  3
##  [51]  3  4  2  2  4  6  3  3  4  3  4  3  3  3 10  3  1 11  3  1  6  4  6  3 12
##  [76]  1 13  4 14  2  4 11  6  1  3  4  1  4  4  4 15  3  6  3  3  3  4  3 14  6
## [101]  3  4 16  6  1  2  2  2 11  4  3  3  3 17  1  4  1  3  6  3  1  3  1  3  4
## [126]  3 16  4  6  4  3  9  3  3  3  3  1  2  3  4  3  1  3  3  3 18  1  2  3  1
## [151]  3 19  1  3  4  1  1  1  1  4  3 20 15  2  3  1  1  1  1  1 21  4  1  4  6
## [176]  4  4  3  1  4  1  4 11 11 11  1  4 11  1  3  6  2  3  1 22  1  3  6  1 14
## [201]  1  3  4  4  4  2  4  6  3  3  1  3  1  6  3  4  4 11  4  1  1 23  1 24  6
## [226]  4  3  2  1  1  3  1  1  6  1  1  1  4  6  3  4  3  4 16  3  1  1  4 25  4
## [251]  4  4  1  1 26  4  4  4  6  4  1  3  3  3  2 19  4  3  4 27  4  4  2  6  3
## [276]  3 11  3  6  2 16  3  3  2  1  1  6  6  6  3  3  3  1  3  4  3  1  3  1 14
## [301] 15 28  2 20  1  3  1  1  1  4  1  3  3  4  1 19 29  4  4  4  1  4  6  4 30
## [326]  3  3  6  1  1  3  1  4  2  1  3  3  3  3 19  6 14  3  1  1 11  1  1  4 14
## [351]  6 11  3  3  4  3  3  2  1 14  1  1  4  1  2 31  1  1  4  1  3  4  3  1  3
## [376] 32  1  1  3  1  3  6  3  3  3  1 19  6  3 11  3  1  3  3 33  2  1  4  4  1
## [401]  6  1  4  2 15  6  4  2  3  4  4  4 14  3  3  4  4  1  1  3  6  2  3  2  1
## [426]  4 34  1  3  1  1 23  3  6  4  9  1  1  6  4  1 35 36 37 38  1  1  1  4  2
## [451]  1 14 15  4  3 14  3  3  6  2  1 15 16  3  4  3  3  4  3  3  4  1 39  6  4
## [476]  3  3  4  3  4  6  2  2  3 40  4  6  4 41  3  1  3  1  3  1  6 42 43  4  1

or

cluster_terms(mat, method = "binary_cut")

binary_cut() and cluster_terms() basically generate the same clusterings, but the labels of clusters might differ.

Simplify general functional enrichment results

Semantic measures can be used for the similarity of GO terms. However, there are still a lot of ontologies (e.g. MsigDB gene sets) that are only represented as a list of genes where the similarity between gene sets are mainly measured by gene overlap. simplifyEnrichment provides the term_similarity() and other related functions (term_similarity_from_enrichResult(), term_similarity_from_KEGG(), term_similarity_from_Reactome(), term_similarity_from_MSigDB() and term_similarity_from_gmt()) which calculate the similarity of terms by the gene overlapping, with methods of Jaccard coefficient, Dice coefficient, overlap coefficient and kappa coefficient.

The similarity can be calculated by providing:

1. A list of gene sets where each gene set contains a vector of genes.
2. A enrichResult object which is normally from the ‘clusterProfiler’, ‘DOSE’, ‘meshes’ or ‘ReactomePA’ package.
3. A list of KEGG/Reactome/MsigDB IDs. The gene set names can also be provided for MsigDB ontologies.
4. A gmt file and the corresponding gene set IDs.

Once you have the similarity matrix, you can send it to simplifyEnrichment() function. But note, as we benchmarked in the manuscript, the clustering on the gene overlap similarity performs much worse than on the semantic similarity.

Comparing clustering methods

In the simplifyEnrichment package, there are also functions that compare clustering results from different methods. Here we still use previously generated variable mat which is the similarity matrix from the 500 random GO terms. Simply running compare_clustering_methods() function performs all supported methods (in all_clustering_methods()) excluding mclust, because mclust usually takes very long time to run. The function generates a figure with three panels:

1. A heatmap of the similarity matrix with different clusterings as row annotations.
2. A heatmap of the pair-wise concordance of the clustering from every two methods.
3. Barplots of the difference scores for each method, the number of clusters (total clusters and the clusters with size >= 5) and the mean similarity of the terms that are in the same clusters (block mean).

In the barplots, the three metrics are defined as follows:

1. Different score: This is the difference between the similarity values for the terms that belong to the same clusters and different clusters. For a similarity matrix \(M\), for term \(i\) and term \(j\) where \(i \ne j\), the similarity value \(x_{i,j}\) is saved to the vector \(\mathbf{x_1}\) only when term \(i\) and \(j\) are in a same cluster. \(x_{i,j}\) is saved to the vector \(\mathbf{x_2}\) when term \(i\) and \(j\) are not in the same cluster. The difference score measures the distribution difference between \(\mathbf{x_1}\) and \(\mathbf{x_2}\), calculated as the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic between the two distributions.
2. Number of clusters: For each clustering, there are two numbers: the number of total clusters and the number of clusters with size >= 5 (only the big clusters).
3. Block mean: Mean similarity values of the diagonal blocks in the similarity heatmap. Using the same convention as for the difference score, the block mean is the mean value of \(\mathbf{x_1}\).

compare_clustering_methods(mat)

## Cluster 500 terms by 'binary_cut'... 43 clusters, used 1.292667 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'kmeans'... 15 clusters, used 5.466666 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'dynamicTreeCut'... 58 clusters, used 0.2248063 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'apcluster'... 39 clusters, used 1.05522 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'hdbscan'... 13 clusters, used 0.2847941 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'fast_greedy'... 29 clusters, used 0.1642258 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'leading_eigen'... 30 clusters, used 0.4157999 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'louvain'... 29 clusters, used 0.1897464 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'walktrap'... 26 clusters, used 0.4785211 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'MCL'... 28 clusters, used 4.439619 secs.

If plot_type argument is set to heatmap. There are heatmaps for the similarity matrix under different clusterings methods. The last panel is a table with the number of clusters.

compare_clustering_methods(mat, plot_type = "heatmap")

## Cluster 500 terms by 'binary_cut'... 43 clusters, used 1.313843 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'kmeans'... 16 clusters, used 5.596574 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'dynamicTreeCut'... 58 clusters, used 0.229274 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'apcluster'... 39 clusters, used 1.707315 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'hdbscan'... 13 clusters, used 0.2676535 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'fast_greedy'... 29 clusters, used 0.1445436 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'leading_eigen'... 30 clusters, used 0.4241514 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'louvain'... 29 clusters, used 0.1744215 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'walktrap'... 26 clusters, used 0.4935129 secs.
## Cluster 500 terms by 'MCL'... 28 clusters, used 3.612622 secs.