# derfinder users guide

Leonardo Collado-Torres1,2*

1Lieber Institute for Brain Development, Johns Hopkins Medical Campus
2Center for Computational Biology, Johns Hopkins University

*lcolladotor@gmail.com

#### 18 May 2026

#### Package

derfinder 1.47.0

# 1 Asking for help

Please read the basics of using `derfinder` in the quick start guide. Thank you.

# 2 derfinder users guide

If you haven’t already, please read the quick start to using derfinder vignette. It explains the basics of using derfinder, how to ask for help, and showcases an example analysis.

The derfinder users guide goes into more depth about what you can do with derfinder. It covers the two implementations of the DER Finder approach (Frazee, Sabunciyan, Hansen et al., 2014). That is, the (A) expressed regions-level and (B) single base-level F-statistics implementations. The vignette also includes advanced material for fine tuning some options, working with non-human data, and example scripts for a high-performance computing cluster.

# 3 Expressed regions-level

The expressed regions-level implementation is based on summarizing the coverage information for all your samples and applying a cutoff to that summary. For example, by calculating the mean coverage at every base and then checking if it’s greater than some cutoff value of interest. Contiguous bases passing the cutoff become a candidate Expressed Region (ER). We can then construct a matrix summarizing the base-level coverage for each sample for the set of ERs. This matrix can then be using with packages developed for feature counting (limma, DESeq2, edgeR, etc) to determine which ERs have differential expression signal. That is, to identify the Differentially Expressed Regions (DERs).

## 3.1 `regionMatrix()`

Commonly, users have aligned their raw RNA-seq data and saved the alignments in BAM files. Some might have chosen to compress this information into BigWig files. BigWig files are much faster to load than BAM files and are the type of file we prefer to work with. However, we can still identify the expressed regions from BAM files.

The function `regionMatrix()` will require you to load the data (either from BAM or BigWig files) and store it all in memory. It will then calculate the mean coverage across all samples, apply the cutoff you chose, and determine the expressed regions.

This is the path you will want to follow in most scenarios.

## 3.2 `railMatrix()`

Our favorite method for identifying expressed regions is based on pre-computed summary coverage files (mean or median) as well as coverage files by sample. Rail is a cloud-enabled aligner that will generate:

1. Per chromosome, a summary (mean or median) coverage BigWig file. Note that the summary is adjusted for library size and is by default set to libraries with 40 million reads.
2. Per sample, a coverage BigWig file with the un-adjusted coverage.

Rail does a great job in creating these files for us, saving time and reducing the memory load needed for this type of analysis with `R`.

If you have this type of data or can generate it from BAM files with other tools, you will be interested in using the `railMatrix()` function. The output is identical to the one from `regionMatrix()`. It’s just much faster and memory efficient. The only drawback is that BigWig files are not fully supported in Windows as of rtracklayer version 1.25.16.

We highly recommend this approach. Rail has also other significant features such as: scalability, reduced redundancy, integrative analysis, mode agnosticism, and inexpensive cloud implementation. For more information, visit rail.bio.

# 4 Single base-level F-statistics

The DER Finder approach was originally implemented by calculating t-statistics between two groups and using a hidden markov model to determine the expression states: not expressed, expressed, differentially expressed (Frazee, Sabunciyan, Hansen et al., 2014). The original software works but had areas where we worked to improve it, which lead to the single base-level F-statistics implementation. Also note that the original software is no longer maintained.

This type of analysis first loads the data and preprocess it in a format that saves time and reduces memory later. It then fits two nested models (an alternative and a null model) with the coverage information for every single base-pair of the genome. Using the two fitted models, it calculates an F-statistic. Basically, it generates a vector along the genome with F-statistics.

A cutoff is then applied to the F-statistics and contiguous base-pairs of the genome passing the cutoff are considered a candidate Differentially Expressed Region (DER).

Calculating F-statistics along the genome is computationally intensive, but doable. The major resource drain comes from assigning p-values to the DERs. To do so, we permute the model matrices and re-calculate the F-statistics generating a set of null DERs. Once we have enough null DERs, we compare the observed DERs against the null DERs to calculate p-values for the observed DERs.

This type of analysis at the chromosome level is done by the `analyzeChr()` function, which is a high level function using many other pieces of derfinder. Once all chromosomes have been processed, `mergeResults()` combines them.

Which implementation of the DER Finder approach you will want to use depends on your specific use case and computational resources available. But in general, we recommend starting with the expressed regions-level implementation.

# 5 Example data

In this vignette we we will analyze a small subset of the samples from the BrainSpan Atlas of the Human Brain (BrainSpan, 2011) publicly available data.

We first load the required packages.

    ## Load libraries
    library("derfinder")
    library("derfinderData")
    library("GenomicRanges")

## 5.1 Phenotype data

For this example, we created a small table with the relevant phenotype data for 12 samples: 6 from fetal samples and 6 from adult samples. We chose at random a brain region, in this case the amygdaloid complex. For this example we will only look at data from chromosome 21. Other variables include the age in years and the gender. The data is shown below.

    library("knitr")
    ## Get pheno table
    pheno <- subset(brainspanPheno, structure_acronym == "AMY")

    ## Display the main information
    p <- pheno[, -which(colnames(pheno) %in% c(
        "structure_acronym",
        "structure_name", "file"
    ))]
    rownames(p) <- NULL
    kable(p, format = "html", row.names = TRUE)

| gender | lab | Age | group
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
1 | F | HSB97.AMY | -0.4423077 | fetal
2 | M | HSB92.AMY | -0.3653846 | fetal
3 | M | HSB178.AMY | -0.4615385 | fetal
4 | M | HSB159.AMY | -0.3076923 | fetal
5 | F | HSB153.AMY | -0.5384615 | fetal
6 | F | HSB113.AMY | -0.5384615 | fetal
7 | F | HSB130.AMY | 21.0000000 | adult
8 | M | HSB136.AMY | 23.0000000 | adult
9 | F | HSB126.AMY | 30.0000000 | adult
10 | M | HSB145.AMY | 36.0000000 | adult
11 | M | HSB123.AMY | 37.0000000 | adult
12 | F | HSB135.AMY | 40.0000000 | adult

## 5.2 Load the data

derfinder offers three functions related to loading raw data. The first one, `rawFiles()`, is a helper function for identifying the full paths to the input files. Next, `loadCoverage()` loads the base-level coverage data from either BAM or BigWig files for a specific chromosome. Finally, `fullCoverage()` will load the coverage for a set of chromosomes using `loadCoverage()`.

We can load the data from derfinderData (Collado-Torres, Jaffe, and Leek, 2026) by first identifying the paths to the BigWig files with `rawFiles()` and then loading the data with `fullCoverage()`. Note that the BrainSpan data is already normalized by the total number of mapped reads in each sample. However, that won’t be the case with most data sets in which case you might want to use the `totalMapped` and `targetSize` arguments. The function `getTotalMapped()` will be helpful to get this information.

    ## Determine the files to use and fix the names
    files <- rawFiles(system.file("extdata", "AMY", package = "derfinderData"),
        samplepatt = "bw", fileterm = NULL
    )
    names(files) <- gsub(".bw", "", names(files))

    ## Load the data from disk
    system.time(fullCov <- fullCoverage(
        files = files, chrs = "chr21",
        totalMapped = rep(1, length(files)), targetSize = 1
    ))

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:22.960362 fullCoverage: processing chromosome chr21

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:22.962362 loadCoverage: finding chromosome lengths

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:22.965292 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB113.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.030754 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB123.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.093338 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB126.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.140631 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB130.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.195945 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB135.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.241283 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB136.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.297381 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB145.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.354024 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB153.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.413927 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB159.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.467093 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB178.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.520757 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB92.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.589413 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB97.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.680835 loadCoverage: applying the cutoff to the merged data

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.685987 filterData: normalizing coverage

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.765175 filterData: done normalizing coverage

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:23.769571 filterData: originally there were 48129895 rows, now there are 48129895 rows. Meaning that 0 percent was filtered.

    ##    user  system elapsed
    ##   0.798   0.028   0.826

Alternatively, since the BigWig files are publicly available from BrainSpan (see here), we can extract the relevant coverage data using `fullCoverage()`. Note that as of rtracklayer 1.25.16 BigWig files are not supported on Windows: you can find the `fullCov` object inside derfinderData to follow the examples.

    ## Determine the files to use and fix the names
    files <- pheno$file
    names(files) <- gsub(".AMY", "", pheno$lab)

    ## Load the data from the web
    system.time(fullCov <- fullCoverage(
        files = files, chrs = "chr21",
        totalMapped = rep(1, length(files)), targetSize = 1
    ))

Note how loading the coverage for 12 samples from the web was quite fast. Although in this case we only retained the information for chromosome 21.

The result of `fullCov` is a list with one element per chromosome. If no filtering was performed, each chromosome has a `DataFrame` with the number of rows equaling the number of bases in the chromosome with one column per sample.

    ## Lets explore it
    fullCov

    ## $chr21
    ## DataFrame with 48129895 rows and 12 columns
    ##          HSB113 HSB123 HSB126 HSB130 HSB135 HSB136 HSB145 HSB153 HSB159 HSB178 HSB92 HSB97
    ##           <Rle>  <Rle>  <Rle>  <Rle>  <Rle>  <Rle>  <Rle>  <Rle>  <Rle>  <Rle> <Rle> <Rle>
    ## 1             0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0
    ## 2             0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0
    ## 3             0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0
    ## 4             0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0
    ## 5             0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0
    ## ...         ...    ...    ...    ...    ...    ...    ...    ...    ...    ...   ...   ...
    ## 48129891      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0
    ## 48129892      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0
    ## 48129893      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0
    ## 48129894      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0
    ## 48129895      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0     0     0

If filtering was performed, each chromosome also has a logical `Rle` indicating which bases of the chromosome passed the filtering. This information is useful later on to map back the results to the genome coordinates.

## 5.3 Filter coverage

Depending on the use case, you might want to filter the base-level coverage at the time of reading it, or you might want to keep an unfiltered version. By default both `loadCoverage()` and `fullCoverage()` will not filter.

If you decide to filter, set the `cutoff` argument to a positive value. This will run `filterData()`. Note that you might want to standardize the library sizes prior to filtering if you didn’t already do it when creating the `fullCov` object. You can do so by by supplying the `totalMapped` and `targetSize` arguments to `filterData()`. Note: don’t use these arguments twice in `fullCoverage()` and `filterData()`.

In this example, we prefer to keep both an unfiltered and filtered version. For the filtered version, we will retain the bases where at least one sample has coverage greater than 2.

    ## Filter coverage
    filteredCov <- lapply(fullCov, filterData, cutoff = 2)

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:24.070157 filterData: originally there were 48129895 rows, now there are 130356 rows. Meaning that 99.73 percent was filtered.

The result is similar to `fullCov` but with the genomic position index as shown below.

    ## Similar to fullCov but with $position
    filteredCov

    ## $chr21
    ## $chr21$coverage
    ## DataFrame with 130356 rows and 12 columns
    ##                  HSB113           HSB123             HSB126             HSB130            HSB135            HSB136
    ##                   <Rle>            <Rle>              <Rle>              <Rle>             <Rle>             <Rle>
    ## 1      2.00999999046326                0                  0 0.0399999991059303 0.230000004172325 0.129999995231628
    ## 2      2.17000007629395                0                  0 0.0399999991059303 0.230000004172325 0.129999995231628
    ## 3      2.21000003814697                0                  0 0.0399999991059303 0.230000004172325 0.129999995231628
    ## 4      2.36999988555908                0                  0 0.0399999991059303 0.230000004172325 0.129999995231628
    ## 5      2.36999988555908                0 0.0599999986588955 0.0399999991059303 0.230000004172325 0.129999995231628
    ## ...                 ...              ...                ...                ...               ...               ...
    ## 130352             1.25 1.27999997138977   2.04999995231628  0.790000021457672  1.62999999523163  1.37000000476837
    ## 130353 1.21000003814697 1.24000000953674   2.04999995231628  0.790000021457672  1.62999999523163  1.37000000476837
    ## 130354 1.21000003814697 1.20000004768372   1.92999994754791  0.790000021457672  1.62999999523163  1.27999997138977
    ## 130355 1.16999995708466 1.20000004768372   1.92999994754791  0.790000021457672  1.62999999523163  1.27999997138977
    ## 130356 1.16999995708466  1.0900000333786   1.87000000476837  0.790000021457672  1.54999995231628  1.01999998092651
    ##                   HSB145            HSB153            HSB159             HSB178              HSB92            HSB97
    ##                    <Rle>             <Rle>             <Rle>              <Rle>              <Rle>            <Rle>
    ## 1                      0 0.589999973773956 0.150000005960464 0.0500000007450581 0.0700000002980232 1.58000004291534
    ## 2                      0 0.629999995231628 0.150000005960464 0.0500000007450581 0.0700000002980232 1.58000004291534
    ## 3                      0   0.6700000166893 0.150000005960464 0.0500000007450581  0.100000001490116 1.61000001430511
    ## 4                      0 0.709999978542328 0.150000005960464 0.0500000007450581  0.129999995231628 1.64999997615814
    ## 5                      0              0.75              0.25  0.100000001490116  0.129999995231628 1.67999994754791
    ## ...                  ...               ...               ...                ...                ...              ...
    ## 130352  1.02999997138977  2.21000003814697  2.46000003814697    2.0699999332428   2.23000001907349 1.50999999046326
    ## 130353  1.02999997138977  2.21000003814697  2.46000003814697    2.0699999332428   2.23000001907349 1.50999999046326
    ## 130354 0.730000019073486  2.00999999046326  2.21000003814697   2.10999989509583   2.13000011444092 1.47000002861023
    ## 130355 0.600000023841858  2.00999999046326  2.10999989509583   2.10999989509583   2.13000011444092 1.47000002861023
    ## 130356 0.560000002384186  1.92999994754791  1.96000003814697   1.77999997138977   2.05999994277954 1.47000002861023
    ##
    ## $chr21$position
    ## logical-Rle of length 48129895 with 3235 runs
    ##   Lengths: 9825448     149       2       9       2       2       6 ...     137    1446     172     740     598   45091
    ##   Values :   FALSE    TRUE   FALSE    TRUE   FALSE    TRUE   FALSE ...    TRUE   FALSE    TRUE   FALSE    TRUE   FALSE

In terms of memory, the filtered version requires less resources. Although this will depend on how rich the data set is and how aggressive was the filtering step.

    ## Compare the size in Mb
    round(c(
        fullCov = object.size(fullCov),
        filteredCov = object.size(filteredCov)
    ) / 1024^2, 1)

    ##     fullCov filteredCov
    ##        22.7         8.5

Note that with your own data, filtering for bases where at least one sample has coverage greater than 2 might not make sense: maybe you need a higher or lower filter. The amount of bases remaining after filtering will impact how long the analysis will take to complete. We thus recommend exploring this before proceeding.

# 6 Expressed region-level analysis

## 6.1 Via `regionMatrix()`

Now that we have the data, we can identify expressed regions (ERs) by using a cutoff of 30 on the base-level mean coverage from these 12 samples. Once the regions have been identified, we can calculate a coverage matrix with one row per ER and one column per sample (12 in this case). For doing this calculation we need to know the length of the sequence reads, which in this study were 76 bp long.

Note that for this type of analysis there is no major benefit of filtering the data. Although it can be done if needed.

    ## Use regionMatrix()
    system.time(regionMat <- regionMatrix(fullCov, cutoff = 30, L = 76))

    ## By using totalMapped equal to targetSize, regionMatrix() assumes that you have normalized the data already in fullCoverage(), loadCoverage() or filterData().

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:24.729194 regionMatrix: processing chr21

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:24.729665 filterData: normalizing coverage

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:24.804072 filterData: done normalizing coverage

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:25.131651 filterData: originally there were 48129895 rows, now there are 2256 rows. Meaning that 100 percent was filtered.

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:25.132249 findRegions: identifying potential segments

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:25.134029 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:25.136654 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:25.157318 findRegions: identifying region clusters

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:25.210754 getRegionCoverage: processing chr21

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:25.222918 getRegionCoverage: done processing chr21

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:25.224439 regionMatrix: calculating coverageMatrix

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:25.226953 regionMatrix: adjusting coverageMatrix for 'L'

    ##    user  system elapsed
    ##   0.479   0.022   0.501

    ## Explore results
    class(regionMat)

    ## [1] "list"

    names(regionMat$chr21)

    ## [1] "regions"        "coverageMatrix" "bpCoverage"

`regionMatrix()` returns a list of elements of length equal to the number of chromosomes analyzed. For each chromosome, there are three pieces of output. The actual ERs are arranged in a `GRanges` object named `regions`.

- regions is the result from filtering with `filterData()` and then defining the regions with `findRegions()`. Note that the metadata variable `value` represents the mean coverage for the given region while `area` is the sum of the base-level coverage (before adjusting for read length) from all samples.
- bpCoverage is a list with the base-level coverage from all the regions. This information can then be used with `plotRegionCoverage()` from derfinderPlot.
- coverageMatrix is the matrix with one row per region and one column per sample. The different matrices for each of the chromosomes can then be merged prior to using limma, DESeq2 or other packages. Note that the counts are generally not integers, but can easily be rounded if necessary.

    ## regions output
    regionMat$chr21$regions

    ## GRanges object with 45 ranges and 6 metadata columns:
    ##      seqnames            ranges strand |     value      area indexStart  indexEnd cluster clusterL
    ##         <Rle>         <IRanges>  <Rle> | <numeric> <numeric>  <integer> <integer>   <Rle>    <Rle>
    ##    1    chr21   9827018-9827582      * |  313.6717 177224.53          1       565       1      565
    ##    2    chr21 15457301-15457438      * |  215.0846  29681.68        566       703       2      138
    ##    3    chr21 20230140-20230192      * |   38.8325   2058.12        704       756       3      366
    ##    4    chr21 20230445-20230505      * |   41.3245   2520.80        757       817       3      366
    ##    5    chr21 27253318-27253543      * |   34.9131   7890.37        818      1043       4      765
    ##   ..      ...               ...    ... .       ...       ...        ...       ...     ...      ...
    ##   41    chr21 33039644-33039688      * |   34.4705 1551.1742       2180      2224      17       45
    ##   42    chr21 33040784-33040798      * |   32.1342  482.0133       2225      2239      18      118
    ##   43    chr21          33040890      * |   30.0925   30.0925       2240      2240      18      118
    ##   44    chr21 33040900-33040901      * |   30.1208   60.2417       2241      2242      18      118
    ##   45    chr21 48019401-48019414      * |   31.1489  436.0850       2243      2256      19       14
    ##   -------
    ##   seqinfo: 1 sequence from an unspecified genome

    ## Number of regions
    length(regionMat$chr21$regions)

    ## [1] 45

`bpCoverage` is the base-level coverage list which can then be used for plotting.

    ## Base-level coverage matrices for each of the regions
    ## Useful for plotting
    lapply(regionMat$chr21$bpCoverage[1:2], head, n = 2)

    ## $`1`
    ##   HSB113 HSB123 HSB126 HSB130 HSB135 HSB136 HSB145 HSB153 HSB159 HSB178 HSB92 HSB97
    ## 1  93.20   3.32  28.22   5.62 185.17  98.34   5.88  16.71   3.52  15.71 47.40 36.54
    ## 2 124.76   7.25  63.68  11.32 374.85 199.28  10.39  30.53   5.83  29.35 65.04 51.42
    ##
    ## $`2`
    ##     HSB113 HSB123 HSB126 HSB130 HSB135 HSB136 HSB145 HSB153 HSB159 HSB178 HSB92 HSB97
    ## 566  45.59   7.94  15.92  34.75 141.61 104.21  19.87  38.61   4.97   23.2 13.95 22.21
    ## 567  45.59   7.94  15.92  35.15 141.64 104.30  19.87  38.65   4.97   23.2 13.95 22.21

    ## Check dimensions. First region is 565 long, second one is 138 bp long.
    ## The columns match the number of samples (12 in this case).
    lapply(regionMat$chr21$bpCoverage[1:2], dim)

    ## $`1`
    ## [1] 565  12
    ##
    ## $`2`
    ## [1] 138  12

The end result of the coverage matrix is shown below. Note that the coverage has been adjusted for read length. Because reads might not fully align inside a given region, the numbers are generally not integers but can be rounded if needed.

    ## Dimensions of the coverage matrix
    dim(regionMat$chr21$coverageMatrix)

    ## [1] 45 12

    ## Coverage for each region. This matrix can then be used with limma or other pkgs
    head(regionMat$chr21$coverageMatrix)

    ##         HSB113     HSB123      HSB126      HSB130      HSB135      HSB136      HSB145       HSB153     HSB159
    ## 1 3653.1093346 277.072106 1397.068687 1106.722895 8987.460401 5570.221054 1330.158818 1461.2986829 297.939342
    ## 2  333.3740816  99.987237  463.909476  267.354342 1198.713552 1162.313418  257.114210  313.8513139  67.940131
    ## 3   35.3828948  20.153553   30.725394   23.483947   16.786842   17.168947   22.895921   52.8756585  28.145395
    ## 4   42.3398681  29.931579   41.094474   24.724736   32.634080   19.309606   33.802632   51.6146040  31.244343
    ## 5   77.7402631 168.939342  115.059342  171.861974  180.638684   93.503158   90.950526   36.3046051  78.069605
    ## 6    0.7988158   1.770263    1.473421    2.231053    1.697368    1.007895    1.171316    0.4221053   1.000132
    ##        HSB178       HSB92        HSB97
    ## 1 1407.288552 1168.519079 1325.9622371
    ## 2  193.695657  127.543553  200.7834228
    ## 3   33.127368   23.758816   20.4623685
    ## 4   33.576974   29.546183   28.2011836
    ## 5   97.151316  100.085790   35.5428946
    ## 6    1.139079    1.136447    0.3956579

We can then use the coverage matrix and packages such as limma, DESeq2 or edgeR to identify which ERs are differentially expressed.

### 6.1.1 Find DERs with DESeq2

Here we’ll use DESeq2 to identify the DERs. To use it we need to round the coverage data.

    ## Required
    library("DESeq2")

    ## Round matrix
    counts <- round(regionMat$chr21$coverageMatrix)

    ## Round matrix and specify design
    dse <- DESeqDataSetFromMatrix(counts, pheno, ~ group + gender)

    ## converting counts to integer mode

    ## Perform DE analysis
    dse <- DESeq(dse, test = "LRT", reduced = ~gender, fitType = "local")

    ## estimating size factors

    ## estimating dispersions

    ## gene-wise dispersion estimates

    ## mean-dispersion relationship

    ## final dispersion estimates

    ## fitting model and testing

    ## Extract results
    deseq <- regionMat$chr21$regions
    mcols(deseq) <- c(mcols(deseq), results(dse))

    ## Explore the results
    deseq

    ## GRanges object with 45 ranges and 12 metadata columns:
    ##      seqnames            ranges strand |     value      area indexStart  indexEnd cluster clusterL  baseMean
    ##         <Rle>         <IRanges>  <Rle> | <numeric> <numeric>  <integer> <integer>   <Rle>    <Rle> <numeric>
    ##    1    chr21   9827018-9827582      * |  313.6717 177224.53          1       565       1      565 2846.2872
    ##    2    chr21 15457301-15457438      * |  215.0846  29681.68        566       703       2      138  451.5196
    ##    3    chr21 20230140-20230192      * |   38.8325   2058.12        704       756       3      366   29.5781
    ##    4    chr21 20230445-20230505      * |   41.3245   2520.80        757       817       3      366   36.0603
    ##    5    chr21 27253318-27253543      * |   34.9131   7890.37        818      1043       4      765  101.6468
    ##   ..      ...               ...    ... .       ...       ...        ...       ...     ...      ...       ...
    ##   41    chr21 33039644-33039688      * |   34.4705 1551.1742       2180      2224      17       45 20.782035
    ##   42    chr21 33040784-33040798      * |   32.1342  482.0133       2225      2239      18      118  6.410542
    ##   43    chr21          33040890      * |   30.0925   30.0925       2240      2240      18      118  0.129717
    ##   44    chr21 33040900-33040901      * |   30.1208   60.2417       2241      2242      18      118  0.702291
    ##   45    chr21 48019401-48019414      * |   31.1489  436.0850       2243      2256      19       14  5.293293
    ##      log2FoldChange     lfcSE      stat    pvalue      padj
    ##           <numeric> <numeric> <numeric> <numeric> <numeric>
    ##    1     -1.6903182  0.831959  0.215262 0.6426743  0.997155
    ##    2     -1.1640426  0.757490  0.871126 0.3506436  0.997155
    ##    3      0.0461488  0.458097  3.132082 0.0767657  0.863614
    ##    4     -0.1866200  0.390920  2.225708 0.1357305  0.997155
    ##    5     -0.1387377  0.320166  3.957987 0.0466495  0.862040
    ##   ..            ...       ...       ...       ...       ...
    ##   41      -0.642056  0.427661 0.6047814 0.4367595  0.997155
    ##   42      -0.634321  0.512262 0.5454039 0.4602018  0.997155
    ##   43      -0.859549  3.116540 0.0206273 0.8857989  0.997155
    ##   44      -0.628285  2.247378 0.5825105 0.4453299  0.997155
    ##   45      -1.694563  1.252290 5.7895910 0.0161213  0.725460
    ##   -------
    ##   seqinfo: 1 sequence from an unspecified genome

You can get similar results using edgeR using these functions: `DGEList()`, `calcNormFactors()`, `estimateGLMRobustDisp()`, `glmFit()`, and `glmLRT()`.

### 6.1.2 Find DERs with limma

Alternatively, we can find DERs using limma. Here we’ll exemplify a type of test closer to what we’ll do later with the F-statistics approach. First of all, we need to define our models.

    ## Build models
    mod <- model.matrix(~ pheno$group + pheno$gender)
    mod0 <- model.matrix(~ pheno$gender)

Next, we’ll transform the coverage information using the same default transformation from `analyzeChr()`.

    ## Transform coverage
    transformedCov <- log2(regionMat$chr21$coverageMatrix + 32)

We can then fit the models and get the F-statistic p-values and control the FDR.

    ## Example using limma
    library("limma")

    ##
    ## Attaching package: 'limma'

    ## The following object is masked from 'package:DESeq2':
    ##
    ##     plotMA

    ## The following object is masked from 'package:BiocGenerics':
    ##
    ##     plotMA

    ## Run limma
    fit <- lmFit(transformedCov, mod)
    fit0 <- lmFit(transformedCov, mod0)

    ## Determine DE status for the regions
    ## Also in https://github.com/LieberInstitute/jaffelab with help and examples
    getF <- function(fit, fit0, theData) {
        rss1 <- rowSums((fitted(fit) - theData)^2)
        df1 <- ncol(fit$coef)
        rss0 <- rowSums((fitted(fit0) - theData)^2)
        df0 <- ncol(fit0$coef)
        fstat <- ((rss0 - rss1) / (df1 - df0)) / (rss1 / (ncol(theData) - df1))
        f_pval <- pf(fstat, df1 - df0, ncol(theData) - df1, lower.tail = FALSE)
        fout <- cbind(fstat, df1 - 1, ncol(theData) - df1, f_pval)
        colnames(fout)[2:3] <- c("df1", "df0")
        fout <- data.frame(fout)
        return(fout)
    }

    ff <- getF(fit, fit0, transformedCov)

    ## Get the p-value and assign it to the regions
    limma <- regionMat$chr21$regions
    limma$fstat <- ff$fstat
    limma$pvalue <- ff$f_pval
    limma$padj <- p.adjust(ff$f_pval, "BH")

    ## Explore the results
    limma

    ## GRanges object with 45 ranges and 9 metadata columns:
    ##      seqnames            ranges strand |     value      area indexStart  indexEnd cluster clusterL     fstat    pvalue
    ##         <Rle>         <IRanges>  <Rle> | <numeric> <numeric>  <integer> <integer>   <Rle>    <Rle> <numeric> <numeric>
    ##    1    chr21   9827018-9827582      * |  313.6717 177224.53          1       565       1      565  1.638455 0.2325446
    ##    2    chr21 15457301-15457438      * |  215.0846  29681.68        566       703       2      138  4.307443 0.0677644
    ##    3    chr21 20230140-20230192      * |   38.8325   2058.12        704       756       3      366  1.323342 0.2796406
    ##    4    chr21 20230445-20230505      * |   41.3245   2520.80        757       817       3      366  0.380332 0.5527044
    ##    5    chr21 27253318-27253543      * |   34.9131   7890.37        818      1043       4      765  7.249519 0.0246955
    ##   ..      ...               ...    ... .       ...       ...        ...       ...     ...      ...       ...       ...
    ##   41    chr21 33039644-33039688      * |   34.4705 1551.1742       2180      2224      17       45   3.11799 0.1112440
    ##   42    chr21 33040784-33040798      * |   32.1342  482.0133       2225      2239      18      118   3.66184 0.0879543
    ##   43    chr21          33040890      * |   30.0925   30.0925       2240      2240      18      118   3.87860 0.0804175
    ##   44    chr21 33040900-33040901      * |   30.1208   60.2417       2241      2242      18      118   4.39338 0.0655381
    ##   45    chr21 48019401-48019414      * |   31.1489  436.0850       2243      2256      19       14   6.80915 0.0282970
    ##           padj
    ##      <numeric>
    ##    1  0.581362
    ##    2  0.324601
    ##    3  0.629191
    ##    4  0.863074
    ##    5  0.309532
    ##   ..       ...
    ##   41  0.385075
    ##   42  0.329829
    ##   43  0.328981
    ##   44  0.324601
    ##   45  0.309532
    ##   -------
    ##   seqinfo: 1 sequence from an unspecified genome

In this simple example, none of the ERs have strong differential expression signal when adjusting for an FDR of 5%.

    table(limma$padj < 0.05, deseq$padj < 0.05)

    ##
    ##         FALSE
    ##   FALSE    45

## 6.2 Via `railMatrix()`

If you have Rail output, you can get the same results faster than with `regionMatrix()`. Rail will create the summarized coverage BigWig file for you, but we are not including it in this package due to its size. So, lets create it.

    ## Calculate the mean: this step takes a long time with many samples
    meanCov <- Reduce("+", fullCov$chr21) / ncol(fullCov$chr21)

    ## Save it on a bigwig file called meanChr21.bw
    createBw(list("chr21" = DataFrame("meanChr21" = meanCov)),
        keepGR =
            FALSE
    )

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:26.701806 coerceGR: coercing sample meanChr21

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:26.760381 createBwSample: exporting bw for sample meanChr21

Now that we have the files Rail creates for us, we can use `railMatrix()`.

    ## Identify files to use
    summaryFile <- "meanChr21.bw"
    ## We had already found the sample BigWig files and saved it in the object 'files'
    ## Lets just rename it to sampleFiles for clarity.
    sampleFiles <- files

    ## Get the regions
    system.time(
        regionMat.rail <- railMatrix(
            chrs = "chr21", summaryFiles = summaryFile,
            sampleFiles = sampleFiles, L = 76, cutoff = 30, maxClusterGap = 3000L
        )
    )

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:27.967272 loadCoverage: finding chromosome lengths

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:27.971018 loadCoverage: loading BigWig file meanChr21.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:28.180529 loadCoverage: applying the cutoff to the merged data

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.040873 filterData: originally there were 48129895 rows, now there are 48129895 rows. Meaning that 0 percent was filtered.

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.107853 filterData: originally there were 48129895 rows, now there are 2256 rows. Meaning that 100 percent was filtered.

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.108895 findRegions: identifying potential segments

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.110149 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.110451 .getSegmentsRle: segmenting with cutoff(s) 30

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.11167 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.125868 findRegions: identifying region clusters

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.150407 railMatrix: processing regions 1 to 45

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.153248 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB113.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.180239 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB123.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.207947 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB126.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.232358 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB130.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.258511 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB135.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.28296 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB136.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.307535 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB145.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.332999 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB153.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.358581 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB159.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.384757 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB178.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.412979 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB92.bw

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.440645 railMatrix: processing file /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library/derfinderData/extdata/AMY/HSB97.bw

    ##    user  system elapsed
    ##   1.477   0.031   1.507

When you take into account the time needed to load the data (`fullCoverage()`) and then creating the matrix (`regionMatrix()`), `railMatrix()` is faster and less memory intensive.

The objects are not identical due to small rounding errors, but it’s nothing to worry about.

    ## Overall not identical due to small rounding errors
    identical(regionMat, regionMat.rail)

    ## [1] FALSE

    ## Actual regions are the same
    identical(ranges(regionMat$chr21$regions), ranges(regionMat.rail$chr21$regions))

    ## [1] TRUE

    ## When you round, the small differences go away
    identical(
        round(regionMat$chr21$regions$value, 4),
        round(regionMat.rail$chr21$regions$value, 4)
    )

    ## [1] TRUE

    identical(
        round(regionMat$chr21$regions$area, 4),
        round(regionMat.rail$chr21$regions$area, 4)
    )

    ## [1] TRUE

# 7 Single base-level F-statistics analysis

One form of base-level differential expression analysis implemented in derfinder is to calculate F-statistics for every base and use them to define candidate differentially expressed regions. This type of analysis is further explained in this section.

## 7.1 Models

Once we have the base-level coverage data for all 12 samples, we can construct the models. In this case, we want to find differences between fetal and adult samples while adjusting for gender and a proxy of the library size.

We can use `sampleDepth()` and it’s helper function `collapseFullCoverage()` to get a proxy of the library size. Note that you would normally use the unfiltered data from all the chromosomes in this step and not just one.

    ## Get some idea of the library sizes
    sampleDepths <- sampleDepth(collapseFullCoverage(fullCov), 1)

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.587638 sampleDepth: Calculating sample quantiles

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:29.653585 sampleDepth: Calculating sample adjustments

    sampleDepths

    ## HSB113.100% HSB123.100% HSB126.100% HSB130.100% HSB135.100% HSB136.100% HSB145.100% HSB153.100% HSB159.100% HSB178.100%
    ##    19.82106    19.40505    19.53045    19.52017    20.33392    19.97758    19.49827    19.41285    19.24186    19.44252
    ##  HSB92.100%  HSB97.100%
    ##    19.55904    19.47733

`sampleDepth()` is similar to `calcNormFactors()` from metagenomeSeq with some code underneath tailored for the type of data we are using. `collapseFullCoverage()` is only needed to deal with the size of the data.

We can then define the nested models we want to use using `makeModels()`. This is a helper function that assumes that you will always adjust for the library size. You then need to define the variable to test, in this case we are comparing fetal vs adult samples. Optionally, you can adjust for other sample covariates, such as the gender in this case.

    ## Define models
    models <- makeModels(sampleDepths,
        testvars = pheno$group,
        adjustvars = pheno[, c("gender")]
    )

    ## Explore the models
    lapply(models, head)

    ## $mod
    ##   (Intercept) testvarsadult sampleDepths adjustVar1M
    ## 1           1             0     19.82106           0
    ## 2           1             0     19.40505           1
    ## 3           1             0     19.53045           1
    ## 4           1             0     19.52017           1
    ## 5           1             0     20.33392           0
    ## 6           1             0     19.97758           0
    ##
    ## $mod0
    ##   (Intercept) sampleDepths adjustVar1M
    ## 1           1     19.82106           0
    ## 2           1     19.40505           1
    ## 3           1     19.53045           1
    ## 4           1     19.52017           1
    ## 5           1     20.33392           0
    ## 6           1     19.97758           0

Note how the null model (`mod0`) is nested in the alternative model (`mod`). Use the same models for all your chromosomes unless you have a specific reason to use chromosome-specific models. Note that derfinder is very flexible and works with any type of nested model.

## 7.2 Find candidate DERs

Next, we can find candidate differentially expressed regions (DERs) using as input the segments of the genome where at least one sample has coverage greater than 2. That is, the filtered coverage version we created previously.

The main function in derfinder for this type of analysis is `analyzeChr()`. It works at a chromosome level and runs behinds the scenes several other derfinder functions. To use it, you have to provide the models, the grouping information, how to calculate the F-statistic cutoff and most importantly, the number of permutations.

By default `analyzeChr()` will use a theoretical cutoff. In this example, we use the cutoff that would correspond to a p-value of 0.05. To assign p-values to the candidate DERs, derfinder permutes the rows of the model matrices, re-calculates the F-statistics and identifies null regions. Then it compares the area of the observed regions versus the areas from the null regions to assign an empirical p-value.

In this example we will use twenty permutations, although in a real case scenario you might consider a larger number of permutations.

In real scenario, you might consider saving the results from all the chromosomes in a given directory. Here we will use analysisResults. For each chromosome you analyze, a new directory with the chromosome-specific data will be created. So in this case, we will have analysisResults/chr21.

    ## Create a analysis directory
    dir.create("analysisResults")
    originalWd <- getwd()
    setwd(file.path(originalWd, "analysisResults"))

    ## Perform differential expression analysis
    system.time(results <- analyzeChr(
        chr = "chr21", filteredCov$chr21, models,
        groupInfo = pheno$group, writeOutput = TRUE, cutoffFstat = 5e-02,
        nPermute = 20, seeds = 20140923 + seq_len(20), returnOutput = TRUE
    ))

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:30.31639 analyzeChr: Pre-processing the coverage data

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.622309 analyzeChr: Calculating statistics

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.624227 calculateStats: calculating the F-statistics

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.727584 analyzeChr: Calculating pvalues

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.728081 analyzeChr: Using the following theoretical cutoff for the F-statistics 5.31765507157871

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.728847 calculatePvalues: identifying data segments

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.730416 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.739349 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.756306 findRegions: identifying region clusters

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.808877 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 1 and seed 20140924

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.877545 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.887497 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.905966 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 2 and seed 20140925

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:31.991902 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.001671 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.018344 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 3 and seed 20140926

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.082878 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.092865 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.109889 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 4 and seed 20140927

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.17064 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.178685 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.193813 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 5 and seed 20140928

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.275933 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.285231 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.302391 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 6 and seed 20140929

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.366934 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.375388 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.390614 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 7 and seed 20140930

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.474681 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.483579 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.500449 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 8 and seed 20140931

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.563719 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.573157 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.590901 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 9 and seed 20140932

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.673699 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.682684 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.700953 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 10 and seed 20140933

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.764962 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.774156 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.790317 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 11 and seed 20140934

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.871433 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.880909 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.898525 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 12 and seed 20140935

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.981785 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:32.99103 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.008765 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 13 and seed 20140936

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.102616 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.112097 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.129414 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 14 and seed 20140937

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.190979 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.199776 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.216056 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 15 and seed 20140938

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.279549 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.288408 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.305097 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 16 and seed 20140939

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.368763 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.378117 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.414084 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 17 and seed 20140940

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.476154 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.483958 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.499004 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 18 and seed 20140941

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.560987 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.569923 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.587362 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 19 and seed 20140942

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.651207 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.659346 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.677664 calculatePvalues: calculating F-statistics for permutation 20 and seed 20140943

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.760023 findRegions: segmenting information

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.769167 findRegions: identifying candidate regions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.792532 calculatePvalues: calculating the p-values

    ## 2026-05-18 17:51:33.827309 analyzeChr: Annotating regions

    ## No annotationPackage supplied. Trying org.Hs.eg.db.

    ## Getting TSS and TSE.

    ## Getting CSS and CSE.

    ## Warning in .set_group_names(grl, use.names, txdb, by): some group names are NAs or duplicated

    ## Getting exons.

    ## Warning in .set_group_names(grl, use.names, txdb, by): some group names are NAs or duplicated

    ## Annotating genes.

    ## .....

    ##    user  system elapsed
    ##  31.999   0.199  32.231

To speed up `analyzeChr()`, you might need to use several cores via the `mc.cores` argument. If memory is limiting, you might want to use a smaller `chunksize` (default is 5 million). Note that if you use too many cores, you might hit the input/output ceiling of your data network and/or hard drives speed.

Before running with a large number of permutations we recommend exploring how long each permutation cycle takes using a single permutation.

Note that analyzing each chromosome with a large number of permutations and a rich data set can take several hours, so we recommend running one job running `analyzeChr()` per chromosome, and then merging the results via `mergeResults()`. This process is further described in the advanced derfinder vignette.

## 7.3 Explore results

When using `returnOutput = TRUE`, `analyzeChr()` will return a list with the results to explore interactively. However, by default it writes the results to disk (one .Rdata file per result).

The following code explores the results.

    ## Explore
    names(results)

    ## [1] "timeinfo"     "optionsStats" "coveragePrep" "fstats"       "regions"      "annotation"

### 7.3.1 optionStats

`optionStats` stores the main options used in the `analyzeChr()` call including the models used, the type of cutoff, number of permutations, seeds for the permutations. All this information can be useful to reproduce the analysis.

    ## Explore optionsStats
    names(results$optionsStats)

    ##  [1] "models"          "cutoffPre"       "scalefac"        "chunksize"       "cutoffFstat"     "cutoffType"
    ##  [7] "nPermute"        "seeds"           "groupInfo"       "lowMemDir"       "analyzeCall"     "cutoffFstatUsed"
    ## [13] "smooth"          "smoothFunction"  "weights"         "returnOutput"

    ## Call used
    results$optionsStats$analyzeCall

    ## analyzeChr(chr = "chr21", coverageInfo = filteredCov$chr21, models = models,
    ##     cutoffFstat = 0.05, nPermute = 20, seeds = 20140923 + seq_len(20),
    ##     groupInfo = pheno$group, writeOutput = TRUE, returnOutput = TRUE)

### 7.3.2 coveragePrep

`coveragePrep` has the result from the `preprocessCoverage()` step. This includes the genomic position index, the mean coverage (after scaling and the log2 transformation) for all the samples, and the group mean coverages. By default, the chunks are written to disk in `optionsStats$lowMemDir` (chr21/chunksDir in this example) to help reduce the required memory resources. Otherwise it is stored in `coveragePrep$coverageProcessed`.

    ## Explore coveragePrep
    names(results$coveragePrep)

    ## [1] "coverageProcessed" "mclapplyIndex"     "position"          "meanCoverage"      "groupMeans"

    ## Group means
    results$coveragePrep$groupMeans

    ## $fetal
    ## numeric-Rle of length 130356 with 116452 runs
    ##   Lengths:        1        1        1        1        2        1 ...        2        1        1        1        1
    ##   Values : 0.401667 0.428333 0.435000 0.461667 0.471667 0.478333 ...  1.39500  1.38167  1.34000  1.33333  1.24833
    ##
    ## $adult
    ## numeric-Rle of length 130356 with 119226 runs
    ##   Lengths:        1        1        1        1        1        1 ...        1        2        1        1        1
    ##   Values : 0.406667 0.413333 0.430000 0.448333 0.485000 0.510000 ...  1.97500  1.91833  1.77667  1.73833  1.62667

### 7.3.3 fstats

The F-statistics are then stored in `fstats`. These are calculated using `calculateStats()`.

    ## Explore optionsStats
    results$fstats

    ## numeric-Rle of length 130356 with 126807 runs
    ##   Lengths:          1          1          1          1          1 ...          1          1          1          1
    ##   Values : 0.01922610 0.02996937 0.02066332 0.02249996 0.01984328 ...   3.031370   2.653428   2.507611   2.324638

    ## Note that the length matches the number of bases used
    identical(length(results$fstats), sum(results$coveragePrep$position))

    ## [1] TRUE

### 7.3.4 regions

The candidate DERs and summary results from the permutations is then stored in `regions`. This is the output from `calculatePvalues()` which uses several underneath other functions including `calculateStats()` and `findRegions()`.

    ## Explore regions
    names(results$regions)

    ## [1] "regions"         "nullStats"       "nullWidths"      "nullPermutation"

For the null regions, the summary information is composed of the mean F-statistic for the null regions (`regions$nullStats`), the width of the null regions (`regions$nullWidths`), and the permutation number under which they were identified (`regions$nullPermutation`).

    ## Permutation summary information
    results$regions[2:4]

    ## $nullStats
    ## numeric-Rle of length 13994 with 13994 runs
    ##   Lengths:        1        1        1        1        1        1 ...        1        1        1        1        1
    ##   Values :  5.43461  5.71738  6.37821  6.33171  5.48965  7.05049 ...  6.12148  5.36584  5.35554  5.36614  5.62516
    ##
    ## $nullWidths
    ## integer-Rle of length 13994 with 12365 runs
    ##   Lengths:   2   1   1   1   1   1   3   1   2   1   1   1   1 ...   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   2   1   1   4   1
    ##   Values :   1  24   7   1  32   2   1  11   1   7   2  14   1 ...   2  14   1  10  15   1   3  45   4  28   6   1   2
    ##
    ## $nullPermutation
    ## integer-Rle of length 13994 with 20 runs
    ##   Lengths:  246  350  574  554  396  462  482 1548 1522  462 1104 2076   70  320  746  114 1460  428  802  278
    ##   Values :    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20

The most important part of the output is the `GRanges` object with the candidate DERs shown below.

    ## Candidate DERs
    results$regions$regions

    ## GRanges object with 591 ranges and 14 metadata columns:
    ##      seqnames            ranges strand |     value      area indexStart  indexEnd cluster clusterL meanCoverage
    ##         <Rle>         <IRanges>  <Rle> | <numeric> <numeric>  <integer> <integer>   <Rle>    <Rle>    <numeric>
    ##   up    chr21 47610386-47610682      * |  11.10304   3297.60     122158    122454     138      933     1.597952
    ##   up    chr21 40196145-40196444      * |  10.06142   3018.43      76110     76409      71     1323     1.303508
    ##   up    chr21 27253616-27253948      * |   8.43488   2808.82      22019     22351      28      407    33.657858
    ##   up    chr21 22115534-22115894      * |   7.23645   2612.36      12274     12634       9      694     0.964464
    ##   up    chr21 22914853-22915064      * |   9.78066   2073.50      17318     17529      21      217     2.838978
    ##   ..      ...               ...    ... .       ...       ...        ...       ...     ...      ...          ...
    ##   up    chr21          35889784      * |   5.31952   5.31952      60088     60088      51      742      2.75417
    ##   up    chr21          47610093      * |   5.31912   5.31912     121865    121865     138      933      1.45583
    ##   up    chr21          16333728      * |   5.31881   5.31881       5048      5048       1        9      1.19500
    ##   up    chr21          34001896      * |   5.31871   5.31871      32577     32577      38     1428      1.71250
    ##   up    chr21          34809571      * |   5.31801   5.31801      43694     43694      46      149      2.95000
    ##      meanfetal meanadult log2FoldChangeadultvsfetal    pvalues significant   qvalues significantQval
    ##      <numeric> <numeric>                  <numeric>  <numeric>    <factor> <numeric>        <factor>
    ##   up   0.82289  2.373013                   1.527949 0.00278671        TRUE  0.738407           FALSE
    ##   up   2.02532  0.581694                  -1.799818 0.00378707        TRUE  0.738407           FALSE
    ##   up  42.46704 24.848674                  -0.773175 0.00464452        TRUE  0.738407           FALSE
    ##   up   1.71906  0.209871                  -3.034045 0.00535906        TRUE  0.738407           FALSE
    ##   up   4.23593  1.442028                  -1.554578 0.00793140        TRUE  0.738407           FALSE
    ##   ..       ...       ...                        ...        ...         ...       ...             ...
    ##   up   3.36000   2.14833                 -0.6452433   0.997856       FALSE  0.974463           FALSE
    ##   up   0.77500   2.13667                  1.4630937   0.998285       FALSE  0.974463           FALSE
    ##   up   1.23167   1.15833                 -0.0885613   0.998714       FALSE  0.974463           FALSE
    ##   up   2.33333   1.09167                 -1.0958600   0.998714       FALSE  0.974463           FALSE
    ##   up   2.87833   3.02167                  0.0701108   0.999571       FALSE  0.974463           FALSE
    ##   -------
    ##   seqinfo: 1 sequence from an unspecified genome; no seqlengths

The metadata columns are:

- value is the mean F-statistics for the candidate DER.
- area is the sum of the F-statistics for the candidate DER.
- indexStart Relates the genomic start coordinate with the filtered genomic index start coordinate.
- indexEnd Similarly as above but for the end coordinates.
- cluster The cluster id to which this candidate DER belongs to.
- clusterL The length of the cluster to which this candidate DER belongs to.
- meanCoverage The base level mean coverage for the candidate DER.
- meanfetal In this example, the mean coverage for the fetal samples.
- meanadult In this example, the mean coverage for the adult samples.
- log2FoldChangeadultvsfetal In this example, the log2 fold change between adult vs fetal samples.
- pvalues The p-value for the candidate DER.
- significant By default, whether the p-value is less than 0.05 or not.
- qvalues The q-value for the candidate DER calculated with qvalue.
- significantQval By default, whether the q-value is less than 0.10 or not.

Note that for this type of analysis you might want to try a few coverage cutoffs and/or F-statistic cutoffs. One quick way to evaluate the results is to compare the width of the regions.

    ## Width of potential DERs
    summary(width(results$regions$regions))

    ##    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
    ##    1.00    1.00    4.00   17.98   17.00  361.00

    sum(width(results$regions$regions) > 50)

    ## [1] 68

    ## Width of candidate DERs
    sig <- as.logical(results$regions$regions$significant)
    summary(width(results$regions$regions[sig]))

    ##    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
    ##    65.0    81.5    97.0   127.8   122.0   361.0

    sum(width(results$regions$regions[sig]) > 50)

    ## [1] 35

### 7.3.5 Nearest annotation

`analyzeChr()` will find the nearest annotation feature using `matchGenes()` from bumphunter (version >= 1.7.3). This information is useful considering that the candidate DERs were identified without relying on annotation. Yet at the end, we are interested to check if they are inside a known exon, upstream a gene, etc.

    ## Nearest annotation
    head(results$annotation)

    ##        name
    ## 1       LSS
    ## 2  ETS2-AS1
    ## 3       APP
    ## 4 LINC00320
    ## 5     NCAM2
    ## 6 LINC00320
    ##                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                annotation
    ## 1                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       NM_001001438 NM_001145436 NM_001145437 NM_002340 NP_001001438 NP_001138908 NP_001138909 NP_002331
    ## 2                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               NR_120405
    ## 3                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             NM_000484 NM_001136016 NM_001136129 NM_001136130 NM_001136131 NM_001204301 NM_001204302 NM_001204303 NM_001385253 NM_201413 NM_201414 NP_000475 NP_001129488 NP_001129601 NP_001129602 NP_001129603 NP_001191230 NP_001191231 NP_001191232 NP_001372182 NP_958816 NP_958817
    ## 4                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 NR_024090 NR_109786 NR_109787 NR_109788
    ## 5 NM_001352591 NM_001352592 NM_001352593 NM_001352594 NM_001352595 NM_001352596 NM_001352597 NM_004540 NP_001339520 NP_001339521 NP_001339522 NP_001339523 NP_001339524 NP_001339525 NP_001339526 NP_004531 XM_011529575 XM_011529580 XM_011529581 XM_011529582 XM_011529585 XM_017028356 XM_024452081 XM_047440784 XM_047440785 XM_054324514 XM_054324515 XM_054324516 XM_054324517 XM_054324518 XM_054324519 XM_054324520 XM_054324521 XM_054324522 XM_054324523 XP_011527877 XP_011527882 XP_011527883 XP_011527884 XP_011527887 XP_016883845 XP_024307849 XP_047296740 XP_047296741 XP_054180489 XP_054180490 XP_054180491 XP_054180492 XP_054180493 XP_054180494 XP_054180495 XP_054180496 XP_054180497 XP_054180498
    ## 6                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 NR_024090 NR_109786 NR_109787 NR_109788
    ##     description region distance     subregion insideDistance exonnumber nexons                         UTR strand
    ## 1   inside exon inside     2602   inside exon              0          2      2 inside transcription region      -
    ## 2 inside intron inside    80936 inside intron          -2382          3      3 inside transcription region      -
    ## 3   inside exon inside    88882   inside exon              0          8      8 inside transcription region      -
    ## 4   inside exon inside    59452   inside exon              0          8      8 inside transcription region      -
    ## 5   inside exon inside   544126   inside exon              0         18     18                       3'UTR      +
    ## 6   inside exon inside    59235   inside exon              0          8      8 inside transcription region      -
    ##    geneL codingL Geneid subjectHits
    ## 1   4245      NA   4047      148466
    ## 2  83939      NA 400867      145831
    ## 3  89960      NA    351      134860
    ## 4  59950      NA 387486      140228
    ## 5 544923      NA   4685      156320
    ## 6  59950      NA 387486      140228

For more details on the output please check the bumphunter package.

Check the section about non-human data (specifically, using annotation different from hg19) on the advanced vignette.

### 7.3.6 Time spent

The final piece is the wallclock time spent during each of the steps in `analyzeChr()`. You can then make a plot with this information as shown in Figure 1.

    ## Time spent
    results$timeinfo

    ##                      init                     setup                  prepData                  savePrep
    ## "2026-05-18 17:51:30 EDT" "2026-05-18 17:51:30 EDT" "2026-05-18 17:51:31 EDT" "2026-05-18 17:51:31 EDT"
    ##            calculateStats                 saveStats             saveStatsOpts          calculatePvalues
    ## "2026-05-18 17:51:31 EDT" "2026-05-18 17:51:31 EDT" "2026-05-18 17:51:31 EDT" "2026-05-18 17:51:33 EDT"
    ##                  saveRegs                  annotate                  saveAnno
    ## "2026-05-18 17:51:33 EDT" "2026-05-18 17:52:02 EDT" "2026-05-18 17:52:02 EDT"

    ## Use this information to make a plot
    timed <- diff(results$timeinfo)
    timed.df <- data.frame(Seconds = as.numeric(timed), Step = factor(names(timed),
        levels = rev(names(timed))
    ))
    library("ggplot2")
    ggplot(timed.df, aes(y = Step, x = Seconds)) +
        geom_point()

Figure 1: Seconds used to run each step in analyzeChr()

## 7.4 Merge results

Once you have analyzed each chromosome using `analyzeChr()`, you can use `mergeResults()` to merge the results. This function does not return an object in R but instead creates several Rdata files with the main results from the different chromosomes.

    ## Go back to the original directory
    setwd(originalWd)

    ## Merge results from several chromosomes. In this case we only have one.
    mergeResults(
        chrs = "chr21", prefix = "analysisResults",
        genomicState = genomicState$fullGenome,
        optionsStats = results$optionsStats
    )

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.308786 mergeResults: Saving options used

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.310304 Loading chromosome chr21

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.339082 mergeResults: calculating FWER

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.353717 mergeResults: Saving fullNullSummary

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.360096 mergeResults: Re-calculating the p-values

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.388549 mergeResults: Saving fullRegions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.395429 mergeResults: assigning genomic states

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.42966 annotateRegions: counting

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.45604 annotateRegions: annotating

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.466642 mergeResults: Saving fullAnnotatedRegions

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.468351 mergeResults: Saving fullFstats

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.497116 mergeResults: Saving fullTime

    ## Files created by mergeResults()
    dir("analysisResults", pattern = ".Rdata")

    ## [1] "fullAnnotatedRegions.Rdata" "fullFstats.Rdata"           "fullNullSummary.Rdata"      "fullRegions.Rdata"
    ## [5] "fullTime.Rdata"             "optionsMerge.Rdata"

- fullFstats.Rdata contains a list with one element per chromosome. Per chromosome it has the F-statistics.
- fullNullSummary.Rdata is a list with the summary information from the null regions stored for each chromosome.
- fullTime.Rdata has the timing information for each chromosome as a list.

### 7.4.1 optionsMerge

For reproducibility purposes, the options used the merge the results are stored in `optionsMerge`.

    ## Options used to merge
    load(file.path("analysisResults", "optionsMerge.Rdata"))

    ## Contents
    names(optionsMerge)

    ## [1] "chrs"            "significantCut"  "minoverlap"      "mergeCall"       "cutoffFstatUsed" "optionsStats"

    ## Merge call
    optionsMerge$mergeCall

    ## mergeResults(chrs = "chr21", prefix = "analysisResults", genomicState = genomicState$fullGenome,
    ##     optionsStats = results$optionsStats)

### 7.4.2 fullRegions

The main result from `mergeResults()` is in `fullRegions`. This is a `GRanges` object with the candidate DERs from all the chromosomes. It also includes the nearest annotation metadata as well as FWER adjusted p-values (fwer) and whether the FWER adjusted p-value is less than 0.05 (significantFWER).

    ## Load all the regions
    load(file.path("analysisResults", "fullRegions.Rdata"))

    ## Metadata columns
    names(mcols(fullRegions))

    ##  [1] "value"                      "area"                       "indexStart"                 "indexEnd"
    ##  [5] "cluster"                    "clusterL"                   "meanCoverage"               "meanfetal"
    ##  [9] "meanadult"                  "log2FoldChangeadultvsfetal" "pvalues"                    "significant"
    ## [13] "qvalues"                    "significantQval"            "name"                       "annotation"
    ## [17] "description"                "region"                     "distance"                   "subregion"
    ## [21] "insideDistance"             "exonnumber"                 "nexons"                     "UTR"
    ## [25] "annoStrand"                 "geneL"                      "codingL"                    "Geneid"
    ## [29] "subjectHits"                "fwer"                       "significantFWER"

Note that `analyzeChr()` only has the information for a given chromosome at a time, so `mergeResults()` re-calculates the p-values and q-values using the information from all the chromosomes.

### 7.4.3 fullAnnotatedRegions

In preparation for visually exploring the results, `mergeResults()` will run `annotateRegions()` which counts how many known exons, introns and intergenic segments each candidate DER overlaps (by default with a minimum overlap of 20bp). `annotateRegions()` uses a summarized version of the genome annotation created with `makeGenomicState()`. For this example, we can use the data included in derfinder which is the summarized annotation of hg19 for chromosome 21.

    ## Load annotateRegions() output
    load(file.path("analysisResults", "fullAnnotatedRegions.Rdata"))

    ## Information stored
    names(fullAnnotatedRegions)

    ## [1] "countTable"     "annotationList"

    ## Take a peak
    lapply(fullAnnotatedRegions, head)

    ## $countTable
    ##   exon intergenic intron
    ## 1    1          0      0
    ## 2    1          0      0
    ## 3    1          0      0
    ## 4    1          0      0
    ## 5    0          1      0
    ## 6    1          0      0
    ##
    ## $annotationList
    ## GRangesList object of length 6:
    ## $`1`
    ## GRanges object with 1 range and 4 metadata columns:
    ##        seqnames            ranges strand |   theRegion                 tx_id                              tx_name
    ##           <Rle>         <IRanges>  <Rle> | <character>         <IntegerList>                      <CharacterList>
    ##   4871    chr21 47609038-47611149      - |        exon 73448,73449,73450,... uc002zij.3,uc002zik.2,uc002zil.2,...
    ##                 gene
    ##        <IntegerList>
    ##   4871           170
    ##   -------
    ##   seqinfo: 1 sequence from hg19 genome
    ##
    ## $`2`
    ## GRanges object with 1 range and 4 metadata columns:
    ##        seqnames            ranges strand |   theRegion         tx_id               tx_name          gene
    ##           <Rle>         <IRanges>  <Rle> | <character> <IntegerList>       <CharacterList> <IntegerList>
    ##   1189    chr21 40194598-40196878      + |        exon   72757,72758 uc002yxf.3,uc002yxg.4            77
    ##   -------
    ##   seqinfo: 1 sequence from hg19 genome
    ##
    ## $`3`
    ## GRanges object with 1 range and 4 metadata columns:
    ##        seqnames            ranges strand |   theRegion                 tx_id                              tx_name
    ##           <Rle>         <IRanges>  <Rle> | <character>         <IntegerList>                      <CharacterList>
    ##   2965    chr21 27252861-27254082      - |        exon 73066,73067,73068,... uc002ylz.3,uc002yma.3,uc002ymb.3,...
    ##                 gene
    ##        <IntegerList>
    ##   2965           139
    ##   -------
    ##   seqinfo: 1 sequence from hg19 genome
    ##
    ## ...
    ## <3 more elements>

# 8 ChIP-seq differential binding

As of version 1.5.27 derfinder has parameters that allow smoothing of the single base-level F-statistics before determining DERs. This allows finding differentially bounded regions (peaks) using ChIP-seq data. In general, ChIP-seq studies are smaller than RNA-seq studies which means that the single base-level F-statistics approach is well suited for differential binding analysis.

To smooth the F-statistics use `smooth = TRUE` in `analyzeChr()`. The default smoothing function is `bumphunter::locfitByCluster()` and all its parameters can be passed specified in the call to `analyzeChr()`. In particular, the `minNum` and `bpSpan` arguments are important. We recommend setting `minNum` to the minimum read length and `bpSpan` to the average peak length expected in the ChIP-seq data being analyzed. Smoothing the F-statistics will take longer but not use significantly more memory than the default behavior. So take this into account when choosing the number of permutations to run.

# 9 Visually explore results

Optionally, we can use the addon package derfinderPlot to visually explore the results.

To make the region level plots, we will need to extract the region level coverage data. We can do so using `getRegionCoverage()` as shown below.

    ## Find overlaps between regions and summarized genomic annotation
    annoRegs <- annotateRegions(fullRegions, genomicState$fullGenome)

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.760681 annotateRegions: counting

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.786576 annotateRegions: annotating

    ## Indeed, the result is the same because we only used chr21
    identical(annoRegs, fullAnnotatedRegions)

    ## [1] FALSE

    ## Get the region coverage
    regionCov <- getRegionCoverage(fullCov, fullRegions)

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.825718 getRegionCoverage: processing chr21

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:03.859053 getRegionCoverage: done processing chr21

    ## Explore the result
    head(regionCov[[1]])

    ##   HSB113 HSB123 HSB126 HSB130 HSB135 HSB136 HSB145 HSB153 HSB159 HSB178 HSB92 HSB97
    ## 1   0.68   0.44   0.48   0.36   0.19   2.34   1.29   1.77   2.21   2.69  1.89  3.57
    ## 2   0.60   0.44   0.48   0.36   0.19   2.30   1.29   1.77   2.21   2.64  1.86  3.60
    ## 3   0.60   0.40   0.48   0.32   0.19   2.39   1.37   1.81   2.31   2.69  1.89  3.60
    ## 4   0.64   0.40   0.48   0.32   0.19   2.61   1.42   1.89   2.36   2.88  1.89  3.60
    ## 5   0.64   0.40   0.48   0.36   0.19   2.65   1.42   1.93   2.36   2.88  1.96  3.70
    ## 6   0.60   0.44   0.48   0.39   0.23   2.65   1.59   1.93   2.36   2.83  1.93  3.70

With this, we are all set to visually explore the results.

    library("derfinderPlot")

    ## Overview of the candidate DERs in the genome
    plotOverview(
        regions = fullRegions, annotation = results$annotation,
        type = "fwer"
    )

    suppressPackageStartupMessages(library("TxDb.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg19.knownGene"))
    txdb <- TxDb.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg19.knownGene

    ## Base-levle coverage plots for the first 10 regions
    plotRegionCoverage(
        regions = fullRegions, regionCoverage = regionCov,
        groupInfo = pheno$group, nearestAnnotation = results$annotation,
        annotatedRegions = annoRegs, whichRegions = 1:10, txdb = txdb, scalefac = 1,
        ask = FALSE
    )

    ## Cluster plot for the first region
    plotCluster(
        idx = 1, regions = fullRegions, annotation = results$annotation,
        coverageInfo = fullCov$chr21, txdb = txdb, groupInfo = pheno$group,
        titleUse = "fwer"
    )

The quick start to using derfinder has example plots for the expressed regions-level approach. The vignette for derfinderPlot has even more examples.

# 10 Interactive HTML reports

We have also developed an addon package called regionReport available via Bioconductor.

The function `derfinderReport()` in regionReport basically takes advantage of the results from `mergeResults()` and plotting functions available in derfinderPlot as well as other neat features from knitrBootstrap. It then generates a customized report for single-base level F-statistics DER finding analyses.

For results from `regionMatrix()` or `railMatrix()` use `renderReport()` from regionReport. In both cases, the resulting HTML report promotes reproducibility of the analysis and allows you to explore in more detail the results through some diagnostic plots.

We think that these reports are very important when you are exploring the resulting DERs after changing a key parameter in `analyzeChr()`, `regionMatrix()` or `railMatrix()`.

Check out the vignette for regionReport for example reports generated with it.

# 11 Miscellaneous features

In this section we go over some other features of derfinder which can be useful for performing feature-counts based analyses, exploring the results, or exporting data.

## 11.1 Feature level analysis

Similar to the expressed region-level analysis, you might be interested in performing a feature-level analysis. More specifically, this means getting a count matrix at the exon-level (or gene-level). `coverageToExon()` allows you to get such a matrix by taking advantage of the summarized annotation produced by `makeGenomicState()`.

In this example, we use the genomic state included in the package which has the information for chr21 TxDb.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg19.knownGene annotation.

    ## Get the exon-level matrix
    system.time(exonCov <- coverageToExon(fullCov, genomicState$fullGenome, L = 76))

    ## class: SerialParam
    ##   bpisup: FALSE; bpnworkers: 1; bptasks: 0; bpjobname: BPJOB
    ##   bplog: FALSE; bpthreshold: INFO; bpstopOnError: TRUE
    ##   bpRNGseed: ; bptimeout: NA; bpprogressbar: FALSE
    ##   bpexportglobals: FALSE; bpexportvariables: FALSE; bpforceGC: FALSE
    ##   bpfallback: FALSE
    ##   bplogdir: NA
    ##   bpresultdir: NA
    ## class: SerialParam
    ##   bpisup: FALSE; bpnworkers: 1; bptasks: 0; bpjobname: BPJOB
    ##   bplog: FALSE; bpthreshold: INFO; bpstopOnError: TRUE
    ##   bpRNGseed: ; bptimeout: NA; bpprogressbar: FALSE
    ##   bpexportglobals: FALSE; bpexportvariables: FALSE; bpforceGC: FALSE
    ##   bpfallback: FALSE
    ##   bplogdir: NA
    ##   bpresultdir: NA

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:06.274941 coverageToExon: processing chromosome chr21

    ## class: SerialParam
    ##   bpisup: FALSE; bpnworkers: 1; bptasks: 0; bpjobname: BPJOB
    ##   bplog: FALSE; bpthreshold: INFO; bpstopOnError: TRUE
    ##   bpRNGseed: ; bptimeout: NA; bpprogressbar: FALSE
    ##   bpexportglobals: FALSE; bpexportvariables: FALSE; bpforceGC: FALSE
    ##   bpfallback: FALSE
    ##   bplogdir: NA
    ##   bpresultdir: NA

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:07.4737 coverageToExon: processing chromosome chr21

    ##    user  system elapsed
    ##   2.904   0.082   3.015

    ## Dimensions of the matrix
    dim(exonCov)

    ## [1] 2658   12

    ## Explore a little bit
    tail(exonCov)

    ##         HSB113      HSB123      HSB126      HSB130       HSB135       HSB136       HSB145     HSB153      HSB159
    ## 4983 0.1173684   0.1382895   0.0000000   0.0000000   0.07894737   0.03947368 5.263158e-03  0.1052632  0.04934211
    ## 4985 4.6542105   1.4557895   1.6034210   0.7798684   1.29592103   0.72986842 9.964474e-01 10.4906578  4.39013167
    ## 4986 7.1510526 291.0205261 252.4892106 152.1905258 439.69500020 263.63486853 2.345414e+02  4.5310526 10.64368415
    ## 4988 0.0000000   0.7063158   0.7223684   0.2639474   0.48657895   0.37657895 6.156579e-01  0.0000000  0.00000000
    ## 4990 2.3064474  64.9423686  69.6584212  35.5769737 101.76394746  76.96736838 5.978842e+01  1.2284210  2.67486840
    ## 4992 0.1652632   8.1834211   9.7538158   2.4193421  10.08618420  14.41013157 5.325658e+00  0.2402632  0.73039474
    ##         HSB178       HSB92       HSB97
    ## 4983 0.1289474  0.03986842  0.44605264
    ## 4985 7.3119736  1.65184211 10.87723678
    ## 4986 4.9807895 11.40447366  6.23315790
    ## 4988 0.0000000  0.05644737  0.00000000
    ## 4990 0.9542105  3.98013159  1.96131579
    ## 4992 0.2601316  0.66907895  0.07473684

With this matrix, rounded if necessary, you can proceed to use packages such as limma, DESeq2, edgeR among others.

## 11.2 Compare results visually

We can certainly make region-level plots using `plotRegionCoverage()` or cluster plots using `plotCluster()` or overview plots using `plotOveview()`, all from derfinderPlot.

First we need to get the relevant annotation information.

    ## Annotate regions as exonic, intronic or intergenic
    system.time(annoGenome <- annotateRegions(
        regionMat$chr21$regions,
        genomicState$fullGenome
    ))

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:08.277501 annotateRegions: counting

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:08.305594 annotateRegions: annotating

    ##    user  system elapsed
    ##   0.069   0.004   0.073

    ## Note that the genomicState object included in derfinder only has information
    ## for chr21 (hg19).

    ## Identify closest genes to regions
    suppressPackageStartupMessages(library("bumphunter"))
    suppressPackageStartupMessages(library("TxDb.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg19.knownGene"))
    txdb <- TxDb.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg19.knownGene
    genes <- annotateTranscripts(txdb)

    ## No annotationPackage supplied. Trying org.Hs.eg.db.

    ## Getting TSS and TSE.

    ## Getting CSS and CSE.

    ## Warning in .set_group_names(grl, use.names, txdb, by): some group names are NAs or duplicated

    ## Getting exons.

    ## Warning in .set_group_names(grl, use.names, txdb, by): some group names are NAs or duplicated

    ## Annotating genes.

    system.time(annoNear <- matchGenes(regionMat$chr21$regions, genes))

    ##    user  system elapsed
    ##   0.943   0.021   0.987

Now we can proceed to use derfinderPlot to make the region-level plots for the top 100 regions.

    ## Identify the top regions by highest total coverage
    top <- order(regionMat$chr21$regions$area, decreasing = TRUE)[1:100]

    ## Base-level plots for the top 100 regions with transcript information
    library("derfinderPlot")
    plotRegionCoverage(regionMat$chr21$regions,
        regionCoverage = regionMat$chr21$bpCoverage,
        groupInfo = pheno$group, nearestAnnotation = annoNear,
        annotatedRegions = annoGenome, whichRegions = top, scalefac = 1,
        txdb = txdb, ask = FALSE
    )

However, we can alternatively use epivizr to view the candidate DERs and the region matrix results in a genome browser.

    ## Load epivizr, it's available from Bioconductor
    library("epivizr")

    ## Load data to your browser
    mgr <- startEpiviz()
    ders_dev <- mgr$addDevice(
        fullRegions[as.logical(fullRegions$significantFWER)], "Candidate DERs"
    )
    ders_potential_dev <- mgr$addDevice(
        fullRegions[!as.logical(fullRegions$significantFWER)], "Potential DERs"
    )
    regs_dev <- mgr$addDevice(regionMat$chr21$regions, "Region Matrix")

    ## Go to a place you like in the genome
    mgr$navigate(
        "chr21", start(regionMat$chr21$regions[top[1]]) - 100,
        end(regionMat$chr21$regions[top[1]]) + 100
    )

    ## Stop the navigation
    mgr$stopServer()

## 11.3 Export coverage to BigWig files

derfinder also includes `createBw()` with related functions `createBwSample()` and `coerceGR()` to export the output of `fullCoverage()` to BigWig files. These functions can be useful in the case where you start with BAM files and later on want to save the coverage data into BigWig files, which are generally smaller.

    ## Subset only the first sample
    fullCovSmall <- lapply(fullCov, "[", 1)

    ## Export to BigWig
    bw <- createBw(fullCovSmall)

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:27.460901 coerceGR: coercing sample HSB113

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:27.483585 createBwSample: exporting bw for sample HSB113

    ## See the file. Note that the sample name is used to name the file.
    dir(pattern = ".bw")

    ## [1] "HSB113.bw"    "meanChr21.bw"

    ## Internally createBw() coerces each sample to a GRanges object before
    ## exporting to a BigWig file. If more than one sample was exported, the
    ## GRangesList would have more elements.
    bw

    ## GRangesList object of length 1:
    ## $HSB113
    ## GRanges object with 155950 ranges and 1 metadata column:
    ##         seqnames            ranges strand |     score
    ##            <Rle>         <IRanges>  <Rle> | <numeric>
    ##   chr21    chr21   9458667-9458741      * |      0.04
    ##   chr21    chr21   9540957-9540971      * |      0.04
    ##   chr21    chr21   9543719-9543778      * |      0.04
    ##   chr21    chr21   9651480-9651554      * |      0.04
    ##   chr21    chr21   9653397-9653471      * |      0.04
    ##     ...      ...               ...    ... .       ...
    ##   chr21    chr21 48093246-48093255      * |      0.04
    ##   chr21    chr21 48093257-48093331      * |      0.04
    ##   chr21    chr21 48093350-48093424      * |      0.04
    ##   chr21    chr21 48112194-48112268      * |      0.04
    ##   chr21    chr21 48115056-48115130      * |      0.04
    ##   -------
    ##   seqinfo: 1 sequence from an unspecified genome

# 12 Advanced arguments

If you are interested in using advanced arguments in derfinder, they are described in the manual pages of each function. Some of the most common advanced arguments are:

- `chrsStyle` (default is `UCSC`)
- `verbose` (by default `TRUE`).

`verbose` controls whether to print status updates for nearly all the functions. `chrsStyle` is used to determine the chromosome naming style and is powered by GenomeInfoDb. Note that `chrsStyle` is used in any of the functions that call `extendedMapSeqlevels()`. If you are working with a different organism than Homo sapiens set the global `species` option using `options(species = 'your species')` with the syntax used in `names(GenomeInfoDb::genomeStyles())`. If you want to disable `extendedMapSeqlevels()` set `chrsStyle` to `NULL`, which can be useful if your organism is not part of GenomeInfoDb.

The third commonly used advanced argument is `mc.cores`. It controls the number of cores to use for the functions that can run with more than one core to speed up. In nearly all the cases, the maximum number of cores depends on the number of chromosomes. One notable exception is `analyzeChr()` where the maximum number of cores depends on the `chunksize` used and the dimensions of the data for the chromosome under study.

Note that using the `...` argument allows you to specify some of the documented arguments. For example, you might want to control the `maxClusterGap` from `findRegions()` in the `analyzeChr()` call.

# 13 Non-human data

If you are working with data from an organism that is not Homo sapiens, then set the global options defining the `species` and the `chrsStyle` used. For example, if you are working with Arabidopsis Thaliana and the NCBI naming style, then set the options using the following code:

    ## Set global species and chrsStyle options
    options(species = "arabidopsis_thaliana")
    options(chrsStyle = "NCBI")

    ## Then proceed to load and analyze the data

Internally derfinder uses `extendedMapSeqlevels()` to use the appropriate chromosome naming style given a species in all functions involving chromosome names.

Further note that the argument `txdb` from `analyzeChr()` is passed to `bumphunter::annotateTranscripts(txdb)`. So if you are using a genome different from hg19 remember to provide the appropriate annotation data or simply use `analyzeChr(runAnnotation = FALSE)`.

So, in the Arabidopsis Thaliana example, your `analyzeChr()` call would look like this:

    ## Load transcript database information
    library("TxDb.Athaliana.BioMart.plantsmart28")

    ## Set organism options
    options(species = "arabidopsis_thaliana")
    options(chrsStyle = "NCBI")

    ## Run command with more arguments
    analyzeChr(txdb = TxDb.Athaliana.BioMart.plantsmart28)

You might find the discussion Using bumphunter with non-human genomes useful.

# 14 Functions that use multiple cores

Currently, the following functions can use multiple cores, several of which are called inside `analyzeChr()`.

- `calculatePvalues()`: 1 core per chunk of data to process.
- `calculateStats()`: 1 core per chunk of data to process.
- `coerceGR()`: 1 core per chromosome. This function is used by `createBw()`.
- `coverageToExon()`: 1 core per strand, then 1 core per chromosome.
- `loadCoverage()`: up to 1 core per tile when loading the data with GenomicFiles. Otherwise, no parallelization is used.
- `fullCoverage()`: 1 core per chromosome. In general, try to avoid using more than 10 cores as you might reach your maximum network speed and/or hard disk input/output seed. For the case described in `loadCoverage()`, you can specify how many cores to use per chromosome for the tiles using the `mc.cores.load` argument effectively resulting in `mc.cores` times `mc.cores.load` used (otherwise it’s `mc.cores` squared).
- `getRegionCoverage()`: 1 core per chromosome.
- `regionMatrix()`: 1 core per chromosome.
- `railMatrix()`: 1 core per chromosome.

All parallel operations use `SnowParam()` from BiocParallel when more than 1 core is being used. Otherwise, `SerialParam()` is used. Note that if you prefer to specify other types of parallelization you can do so by specifying the `BPPARAM.custom` advanced argument.

Because `SnowParam()` requires `R` to load the necessary packages on each worker, the key function `fstats.apply()` was isolated in the derfinderHelper package. This package has much faster loading speeds than derfinder which greatly impacts performance on cases where the actual step of calculating the F-statistics is fast.

You may prefer to use `MulticoreParam()` described in the BiocParallel vignette. In that case, when using these functions use `BPPARAM.custom = MulticoreParam(workers = x)` where `x` is the number of cores you want to use. Note that in some systems, as is the case of the cluster used by derfinder’s developers, the system tools for assessing memory usage can be misleading, thus resulting in much higher memory loads when using `MulticoreParam()` instead of the default `SnowParam()`.

# 15 Loading data details

## 15.1 Controlling loading from BAM files

If you are loading data from BAM files, you might want to specify some criteria to decide which reads to include or not. For example, your data might have been generated by a strand-specific protocol. You can do so by specifying the arguments of `scanBamFlag()` from Rsamtools.

You can also control whether to include or exclude bases with `CIGAR` string `D` (deletion from the reference) by setting the advanced argument `drop.D = TRUE` in your `fullCoverage()` or `loadCoverage()` call.

## 15.2 Unfiltered base-level coverage

Note that in most scenarios, the `fullCov` object illustrated in the introductory vignette can be large in memory. When making plots or calculating the region-level coverage, we don’t need the full information. In such situations, it might pay off to create a smaller version by loading only the required data. This can be achieved using the advanced argument `which` to `fullCoverage()` or `loadCoverage()`.

However, it is important to consider that when reading the data from BAM files, a read might align partially inside the region of interest. By default such a read would be discarded and thus the base-level coverage would be lower than what it is in reality. The advanced argument `protectWhich` extends regions by 30 kbp (15 kbp each side) to help mitigate this issue.

We can illustrate this issue with the example data from derfinder. First, we load in the data and generate some regions of interest.

    ## Find some regions to work with
    example("loadCoverage", "derfinder")

    ##
    ## ldCvrg> datadir <- system.file("extdata", "genomeData", package = "derfinder")
    ##
    ## ldCvrg> files <- rawFiles(
    ## ldCvrg+     datadir = datadir, samplepatt = "*accepted_hits.bam$",
    ## ldCvrg+     fileterm = NULL
    ## ldCvrg+ )
    ##
    ## ldCvrg> ## Shorten the column names
    ## ldCvrg> names(files) <- gsub("_accepted_hits.bam", "", names(files))
    ##
    ## ldCvrg> ## Read and filter the data, only for 2 files
    ## ldCvrg> dataSmall <- loadCoverage(files = files[1:2], chr = "21", cutoff = 0)

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:27.784905 loadCoverage: finding chromosome lengths

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:27.792679 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009101_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:27.812825 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009102_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:27.829636 loadCoverage: applying the cutoff to the merged data

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:27.837083 filterData: originally there were 48129895 rows, now there are 454 rows. Meaning that 100 percent was filtered.

    ##
    ## ldCvrg> ## Not run:
    ## ldCvrg> ##D ## Export to BigWig files
    ## ldCvrg> ##D createBw(list("chr21" = dataSmall))
    ## ldCvrg> ##D
    ## ldCvrg> ##D ## Load data from BigWig files
    ## ldCvrg> ##D dataSmall.bw <- loadCoverage(c(
    ## ldCvrg> ##D     ERR009101 = "ERR009101.bw", ERR009102 =
    ## ldCvrg> ##D         "ERR009102.bw"
    ## ldCvrg> ##D ), chr = "chr21")
    ## ldCvrg> ##D
    ## ldCvrg> ##D ## Compare them
    ## ldCvrg> ##D mapply(function(x, y) {
    ## ldCvrg> ##D     x - y
    ## ldCvrg> ##D }, dataSmall$coverage, dataSmall.bw$coverage)
    ## ldCvrg> ##D
    ## ldCvrg> ##D ## Note that the only difference is the type of Rle (integer vs numeric) used
    ## ldCvrg> ##D ## to store the data.
    ## ldCvrg> ## End(Not run)
    ## ldCvrg>
    ## ldCvrg>
    ## ldCvrg>
    ## ldCvrg>

    example("getRegionCoverage", "derfinder")

    ##
    ## gtRgnC> ## Obtain fullCov object
    ## gtRgnC> fullCov <- list("21" = genomeDataRaw$coverage)
    ##
    ## gtRgnC> ## Assign chr lengths using hg19 information, use only first two regions
    ## gtRgnC> library("GenomeInfoDb")  # for getChromInfoFromUCSC()
    ##
    ## gtRgnC> regions <- genomeRegions$regions[1:2]
    ##
    ## gtRgnC> seqlengths(regions) <- seqlengths(getChromInfoFromUCSC("hg19",
    ## gtRgnC+     as.Seqinfo = TRUE
    ## gtRgnC+ ))[
    ## gtRgnC+     mapSeqlevels(names(seqlengths(regions)), "UCSC")
    ## gtRgnC+ ]
    ##
    ## gtRgnC> ## Finally, get the region coverage
    ## gtRgnC> regionCov <- getRegionCoverage(fullCov = fullCov, regions = regions)

    ## extendedMapSeqlevels: sequence names mapped from NCBI to UCSC for species homo_sapiens

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:27.917825 getRegionCoverage: processing chr21

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:27.929402 getRegionCoverage: done processing chr21

Next, we load the coverage again using `which` but without any padding. We can see how the coverage is not the same by looking at the maximum coverage for each sample.

    ## Illustrate reading data from a set of regions
    test <- loadCoverage(
        files = files, chr = "21", cutoff = NULL, which = regions,
        protectWhich = 0, fileStyle = "NCBI"
    )

    ## extendedMapSeqlevels: sequence names mapped from UCSC to NCBI for species homo_sapiens

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.028145 loadCoverage: finding chromosome lengths

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.030836 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009101_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.049333 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009102_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.108651 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009105_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.127819 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009107_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.14754 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009108_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.168604 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009112_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.189412 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009115_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.209205 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009116_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.22896 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009131_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.247881 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009138_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.267194 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009144_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.286954 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009145_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.307503 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009148_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.32809 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009151_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.349931 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009152_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.370225 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009153_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.393259 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009159_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.415602 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009161_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.436958 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009163_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.457588 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009164_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.47646 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009167_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.496516 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031812_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.51611 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031835_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.534845 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031867_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.5543 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031868_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.572792 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031900_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.591382 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031904_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.609969 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031914_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.629185 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031936_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.648562 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031958_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.709667 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031960_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.727504 loadCoverage: applying the cutoff to the merged data

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.739838 filterData: originally there were 48129895 rows, now there are 48129895 rows. Meaning that 0 percent was filtered.

    ## Some reads were ignored and thus the coverage is lower as can be seen below:
    sapply(test$coverage, max) - sapply(genomeDataRaw$coverage, max)

    ## ERR009101 ERR009102 ERR009105 ERR009107 ERR009108 ERR009112 ERR009115 ERR009116 ERR009131 ERR009138 ERR009144 ERR009145
    ##         0         0         0         0        -1         0        -1        -2        -2        -2        -1        -1
    ## ERR009148 ERR009151 ERR009152 ERR009153 ERR009159 ERR009161 ERR009163 ERR009164 ERR009167 SRR031812 SRR031835 SRR031867
    ##        -3        -3         0        -3        -3        -3        -1        -3        -3         0        -1         0
    ## SRR031868 SRR031900 SRR031904 SRR031914 SRR031936 SRR031958 SRR031960
    ##         0         0        -1         0         0         0         0

When we re-load the data using some padding to the regions, we find that the coverage matches at all the bases.

    ## Illustrate reading data from a set of regions

    test2 <- loadCoverage(
        files = files, chr = "21", cutoff = NULL,
        which = regions, protectWhich = 3e4, fileStyle = "NCBI"
    )

    ## extendedMapSeqlevels: sequence names mapped from UCSC to NCBI for species homo_sapiens

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.860134 loadCoverage: finding chromosome lengths

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.862928 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009101_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.88218 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009102_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.900983 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009105_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.919682 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009107_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.938306 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009108_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.956894 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009112_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.975738 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009115_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:28.994633 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009116_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.013862 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009131_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.032614 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009138_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.051798 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009144_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.070739 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009145_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.089977 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009148_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.108708 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009151_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.12724 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009152_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.145633 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009153_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.1668 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009159_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.187333 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009161_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.206259 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009163_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.224851 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009164_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.253602 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/ERR009167_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.274331 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031812_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.294101 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031835_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.354444 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031867_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.374245 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031868_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.393208 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031900_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.412526 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031904_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.433015 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031914_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.451575 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031936_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.469972 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031958_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.488903 loadCoverage: loading BAM file /private/var/folders/r0/l4fjk6cj5xj0j3brt4bplpl40000gt/T/RtmpB5ofhU/Rinst49a840068a85/derfinder/extdata/genomeData/SRR031960_accepted_hits.bam

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.507339 loadCoverage: applying the cutoff to the merged data

    ## 2026-05-18 17:52:29.519827 filterData: originally there were 48129895 rows, now there are 48129895 rows. Meaning that 0 percent was filtered.

    ## Adding some padding to the regions helps get the same coverage
    identical(sapply(test2$coverage, max), sapply(genomeDataRaw$coverage, max))

    ## [1] TRUE

    ## A more detailed test reveals that the coverage matches at every base
    all(mapply(function(x, y) {
        identical(x, y)
    }, test2$coverage, genomeDataRaw$coverage))

    ## [1] TRUE

How much padding you need to use will depend on your specific data set, and you might be comfortable getting approximately the same coverage values for the sake of greatly reducing the memory resources needed.

## 15.3 Input files in a different naming style

If you are under the case where you like to use a specific chromosome naming style but the raw data files use another one, you might need to use the `fileStyle` argument.

For example, you could be working with Homo sapiens data and your preferred naming style is UCSC (chr1, chr2, …, chrX, chrY) but the raw data uses NCBI style names (1, 2, …, X, Y). In that case, use `fullCoverage(fileStyle = 'NCBI')` or `loadCoverage(fileStyle = 'NCBI')` depending if you are loading one chromosome or multiple at a time.

## 15.4 Loading data in chunks

If you prefer to do so, `fullCoverage()` and `loadCoverage()` can load the data of a chromosome in chunks using GenomicFiles. This is controlled by whether you specify the `tilewidth` argument.

Notice that you might run into slight coverage errors near the borders of the tiles for the same reason that was illustrated previously when loading specific regions.

This approach is not necessarily more efficient and can be significantly time consuming if you use a small `tilewidth`.

## 15.5 Large number of samples

If you have a large number of samples (say thousands), it might be best to submit cluster jobs that run `loadCoverage()` or `fullCoverage()` for only one chromosome at a time.

In the case of working with Rail output, you can either use `railMatrix()` with the argument `file.cores` greater than 1 or specify the advanced argument `BPPARAM.railChr` to control the parallel environment used for loading the BigWig files. Doing so, you can then submit cluster jobs that run `railMatrix()` for one chromosome at a time, yet read in the data fast. You can do all of from R by using `BPPARAM.custom` and `BPPARAM.railChr` at the same time where you use a `BatchJobsParam()` for the first one.

Another option when working with Rail output is to simply load the summary BigWig data (mean, median), then define the ERs using `findRegions()` and write them to a BED file. You can then use bwtool to create the coverage matrix.

# 16 Flow charts

## 16.1 DER analysis flow chart

Figure 2 illustrates how most of derfinder’s functions interact when performing a base-level differential expression analysis by calculating base-level F-statistics.

Figure 2: derfinder F-statistics flow chart

Flow chart of the different processing steps (black boxes) that can be carried out using derfinder and the functions that perform these actions (in red). Input and output is shown in green boxes. Functions in blue are those applied to the results from multiple chromosomes (`mergeResults()` and `derfinderReport`). regionReport functions are shown in orange while derfinderPlot functions are shown in dark purple. Purple dotted arrow marks functions that require unfiltered base-level coverage.

## 16.2 `analyzeChr()` flow chart

Figure 3: analyzeChr() flow chart

Figure 3 shows in more detail the processing flow in `analyzeChr()`, which is the main function for identifying candidate differentially expressed regions (DERs) from the base-level F-statistics.

Many fine-tunning arguments can be passed to `analyzeChr()` to feed into the other functions. For example, you might want to use a smaller `chunksize` when pre-processing the coverage data (the default is 5 million): specially if you have hundreds of samples.

Another useful argument is `scalefac` (by default it’s 32) which controls the scaling factor to use before the log2 transformation.

Furthermore, you might want to specify `maxClusterGap` to control the maximum gap between two regions before they are considered to be part of the same cluster.

## 16.3 `regionMatrix()` flow chart

Figure 4: regionMatrix() flow chart

Figure 4 shows the functions used internally by `regionMatrix()` and processing steps for identifying expressed regions. Overall, it is much simpler than `analyzeChr()`. The flow is even simpler in `railMatrix()`.

# 17 Base-level F-statistics projects

For each project where you will calculating base-level F-statistics, we recommend the following organization. You might be interested in a similar structure when using `regionMatrix()` if you have BAM files. The notable exception is when you are analyzing output data from Rail in which case you won’t be needing this type of organization. Remember that `railMatrix()` is much less computationally intensive than `analyzeChr()`.

## 17.1 File organization

This is our recommended file organization when using `analyzeChr()`.

    ProjectDir
    |-derCoverageInfo
    |-derAnalysis
    |---analysis01
    |---analysis02

We start with a main project directory that has two initial directories. One for storing the coverage data, and one for storing each analysis: you might explore different models, cutoffs or other parameters.

You can then use `fullCoverage()`, save the result and also save the filtered coverage information for each chromosome separately. Doing so will result in the following structure.

    ProjectDir
    |-derCoverageInfo
    |---Chr1Cov.Rdata
    |---Chr2Cov.Rdata
    ...
    |---ChrYCov.Rdata
    |---fullCov.Rdata
    |-derAnalysis
    |---analysis01
    |---analysis02

Next, you can use `analyzeChr()` for each of the chromosomes of a specific analysis (say analysis01). Doing so will create several Rdata files per chromosome as shown below. `bash` scripts can be useful if you wish to submit one cluster job per chromosome. In general, you will use the same model and group information for each chromosome, so saving the information can be useful.

    ProjectDir
    |-derCoverageInfo
    |---Chr1Cov.Rdata
    |---Chr2Cov.Rdata
    ...
    |---ChrYCov.Rdata
    |---fullCov.Rdata
    |-derAnalysis
    |---analysis01
    |-----models.Rdata
    |-----groupInfo.Rdata
    |-----chr1/
    |-------chunksDir/
    |-------logs/
    |-------annotation.Rdata
    |-------coveragePrep.Rdata
    |-------fstats.Rdata
    |-------optionsStats.Rdata
    |-------regions.Rdata
    |-------timeinfo.Rdata
    |-----chr2/
    ...
    |-----chrY/
    |---analysis02

Then use `mergeResults()` to pool together the results from all the chromosomes for a given analysis (here analysis01).

    ProjectDir
    |-derCoverageInfo
    |---Chr1Cov.Rdata
    |---Chr2Cov.Rdata
    ...
    |---ChrYCov.Rdata
    |---fullCov.Rdata
    |-derAnalysis
    |---analysis01
    |-----logs/
    |-----fullAnnotatedRegions.Rdata
    |-----fullFstats.Rdata
    |-----fullNullSummary.Rdata
    |-----fullRegions.Rdata
    |-----fullTime.Rdata
    |-----optionsMerge.Rdata
    |-----chr1/
    |-------chunksDir/
    |-------logs/
    |-------annotation.Rdata
    |-------coveragePrep.Rdata
    |-------fstats.Rdata
    |-------optionsStats.Rdata
    |-------regions.Rdata
    |-------timeinfo.Rdata
    |-----chr2/
    ...
    |-----chrY/
    |---analysis02

Finally, you might want to use `derfinderReport()` from regionReport to create a HTML report of the results.

## 17.2 bash scripts

If you are following our recommended file organization for a base-level F-statistics DER finding analysis, you might be interested in the following `bash` scripts templates. Note that there are plenty of other solutions, such as writing a master `R` script and using BiocParallel to submit jobs and administer them for you. Check out the `BatchJobsParam()` for more information. If you want to use `bash` scripts, take a look below.

For interacting between `bash` and `R` we have found quite useful the getopt package. Here we include an example `R` script that is controlled by a `bash` script which submits a job for each chromosome to analyze for a given analysis.

The two files, derfinderAnalysis.R and derAnalysis.sh should live under the derAnalysis directory.

    ProjectDir
    |-derCoverageInfo
    |---Chr1Cov.Rdata
    |---Chr2Cov.Rdata
    ...
    |---ChrYCov.Rdata
    |---fullCov.Rdata
    |-derAnalysis
    |---derfinder-Analysis.R
    |---derAnalysis.sh
    |---analysis01
    |---analysis02

Then, you can simply use:

    cd /ProjectDir/derAnalysis
    sh derAnalysis.sh analysis01

to run `analyzeChr()` on all your chromosomes.

### 17.2.1 derfinder-analysis.R

    ## Run derfinder's analysis steps with timing info

    ## Load libraries
    library("getopt")

    ## Available at http:/bioconductor.org/packages/derfinder
    library("derfinder")

    ## Specify parameters
    spec <- matrix(c(
        "DFfile", "d", 1, "character", "path to the .Rdata file with the results from loadCoverage()",
        "chr", "c", 1, "character", "Chromosome under analysis. Use X instead of chrX.",
        "mcores", "m", 1, "integer", "Number of cores",
        "verbose", "v", 2, "logical", "Print status updates",
        "help", "h", 0, "logical", "Display help"
    ), byrow = TRUE, ncol = 5)
    opt <- getopt(spec)

    ## Testing the script
    test <- FALSE
    if (test) {
        ## Speficy it using an interactive R session and testing
        test <- TRUE
    }

    ## Test values
    if (test) {
        opt <- NULL
        opt$DFfile <- "/ProjectDir/derCoverageInfo/chr21Cov.Rdata"
        opt$chr <- "21"
        opt$mcores <- 1
        opt$verbose <- NULL
    }

    ## if help was asked for print a friendly message
    ## and exit with a non-zero error code
    if (!is.null(opt$help)) {
        cat(getopt(spec, usage = TRUE))
        q(status = 1)
    }

    ## Default value for verbose = TRUE
    if (is.null(opt$verbose)) opt$verbose <- TRUE

    if (opt$verbose) message("Loading Rdata file with the output from loadCoverage()")
    load(opt$DFfile)

    ## Make it easy to use the name later. Here I'm assuming the names were generated using output='auto' in loadCoverage()
    eval(parse(text = paste0("data <- ", "chr", opt$chr, "CovInfo")))
    eval(parse(text = paste0("rm(chr", opt$chr, "CovInfo)")))

    ## Just for testing purposes
    if (test) {
        tmp <- data
        tmp$coverage <- tmp$coverage[1:1e6, ]
        library("IRanges")
        tmp$position[which(tmp$pos)[1e6 + 1]:length(tmp$pos)] <- FALSE
        data <- tmp
    }

    ## Load the models
    load("models.Rdata")

    ## Load group information
    load("groupInfo.Rdata")

    ## Run the analysis with lowMemDir
    analyzeChr(
        chr = opt$chr, coverageInfo = data, models = models,
        cutoffFstat = 1e-06, cutoffType = "theoretical", nPermute = 1000,
        seeds = seq_len(1000), maxClusterGap = 3000, groupInfo = groupInfo,
        subject = "hg19", mc.cores = opt$mcores,
        lowMemDir = file.path(tempdir(), paste0("chr", opt$chr), "chunksDir"),
        verbose = opt$verbose, chunksize = 1e5
    )

    ## Done
    if (opt$verbose) {
        print(proc.time())
        print(sessionInfo(), locale = FALSE)
    }

Remember to modify the the script to fit your project.

### 17.2.2 derAnalysis.sh

    #!/bin/sh

    ## Usage
    # sh derAnalysis.sh analysis01

    # Directories
    MAINDIR=/ProjectDir
    WDIR=${MAINDIR}/derAnalysis
    DATADIR=${MAINDIR}/derCoverageInfo

    # Define variables
    SHORT='derA-01'
    PREFIX=$1

    # Construct shell files
    for chrnum in 22 21 Y 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 X 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
    do
        echo "Creating script for chromosome ${chrnum}"

        if [[ ${chrnum} == "Y" ]]
        then
            CORES=2
        else
            CORES=6
        fi

        chr="chr${chrnum}"
        outdir="${PREFIX}/${chr}"
        sname="${SHORT}.${PREFIX}.${chr}"
        cat > ${WDIR}/.${sname}.sh <<EOF
    #!/bin/bash
    #$ -cwd
    #$ -m e
    #$ -l mem_free=8G,h_vmem=10G,h_fsize=10G
    #$ -N ${sname}
    #$ -pe local ${CORES}

    echo "**** Job starts ****"
    date

    # Create output directory
    mkdir -p ${WDIR}/${outdir}
    # Make logs directory
    mkdir -p ${WDIR}/${outdir}/logs

    # run derfinder-analysis.R
    cd ${WDIR}/${PREFIX}/

    # specific to our cluster
    # see http://www.jhpce.jhu.edu/knowledge-base/environment-modules/
    module load R/3.3.x
    Rscript ${WDIR}/derfinder-analysis.R -d "${DATADIR}/${chr}Cov.Rdata" -c "${chrnum}" -m ${CORES} -v TRUE

    # Move log files into the logs directory
    mv ${WDIR}/${sname}.* ${WDIR}/${outdir}/logs/

    echo "**** Job ends ****"
    date
    EOF
        call="qsub .${sname}.sh"
        $call
    done

Your cluster might specify memory requirements differently and you might need to use fewer or more cores depending on your data set.

# 18 Expressed regions-level projects

If you are using `regionMatrix()`, an organization similar to the one we mentioned for the single base-level F-statistics implementation is recommended. If you have a very large number of samples, it might be best to store the coverage data separately by chromosome instead of a single `fullCov` object. This is help with the memory load since you can then write a script for loading the coverage data for the chromosome of interest and running `regionMatrix()` on it. Once all your jobs are done, merge the results from them.

If you are using `railMatrix()`, you don’t need any fancy setup. You only need the paths to the summary files and the sample files, all of which are assumed to be BigWig files.

# 19 Summary

We have illustrated how to identify candidate differentially expressed regions without using annotation by using `analyzeChr()`. Furthermore, we covered how to perform the expressed region-level matrix analysis with `regionMatrix()` or `railMatrix()`. We also highlighted other uses of the derfinder package.

Latter sections of this vignette covered the most commonly used advanced arguments, details on how to load data, flow charts explaining the relationships between the functions, the recommended output organization, and example shell scripts for running the analysis.

# 20 Reproducibility

This package was made possible thanks to:

- R (R Core Team, 2026)
- AnnotationDbi (Pagès, Carlson, Falcon et al., 2017)
- BiocParallel (Wang, Morgan, Obenchain et al., 2026)
- bumphunter (Jaffe, Murakami, Lee et al., 2012) and (Jaffe, Murakami, Lee et al., 2012)
- derfinderHelper (Collado-Torres, Jaffe, and Leek, 2017)
- GenomeInfoDb (Arora, Morgan, Carlson et al., 2017)
- GenomicAlignments (Lawrence, Huber, Pagès et al., 2013)
- GenomicFeatures (Lawrence, Huber, Pagès et al., 2013)
- GenomicFiles (Bioconductor Package Maintainer, Obenchain, Love et al., 2026)
- GenomicRanges (Lawrence, Huber, Pagès et al., 2013)
- Hmisc (Harrell Jr, 2026)
- IRanges (Lawrence, Huber, Pagès et al., 2013)
- qvalue (Storey, Bass, Dabney et al., 2026)
- Rsamtools (Morgan, Pagès, Obenchain et al., 2026)
- rtracklayer (Lawrence, Gentleman, and Carey, 2009)
- S4Vectors (Pagès, Lawrence, and Aboyoun, 2017)
- derfinderData (Collado-Torres, Jaffe, and Leek, 2026)
- sessioninfo (Wickham, Chang, Flight et al., 2025)
- ggplot2 (Wickham, 2016)
- knitr (Xie, 2014)
- BiocStyle (Oleś, 2026)
- RefManageR (McLean, 2017)
- rmarkdown (Allaire, Xie, Dervieux et al., 2026)
- testthat (Wickham, 2011)
- TxDb.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg19.knownGene (Team and Maintainer, 2025)

Code for creating the vignette

    ## Create the vignette
    library("rmarkdown")
    system.time(render("derfinder-users-guide.Rmd", "BiocStyle::html_document"))

    ## Extract the R code
    library("knitr")
    knit("derfinder-users-guide.Rmd", tangle = TRUE)

    ## Clean up
    file.remove("derfinderUsersGuideRef.bib")

    ## Warning in file.remove("derfinderUsersGuideRef.bib"): cannot remove file 'derfinderUsersGuideRef.bib', reason 'No such
    ## file or directory'

    ## [1] FALSE

    unlink("analysisResults", recursive = TRUE)
    file.remove("HSB113.bw")

    ## [1] TRUE

    file.remove("meanChr21.bw")

    ## [1] TRUE

Date the vignette was generated.

    ## [1] "2026-05-18 17:52:29 EDT"

Wallclock time spent generating the vignette.

    ## Time difference of 1.13 mins

`R` session information.

    ## ─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    ##  setting  value
    ##  version  R version 4.6.0 Patched (2026-05-01 r89994)
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    ##  language (EN)
    ##  collate  C
    ##  ctype    en_US.UTF-8
    ##  tz       America/New_York
    ##  date     2026-05-18
    ##  pandoc   3.9.0.2 @ /usr/local/bin/ (via rmarkdown)
    ##  quarto   1.7.32 @ /usr/local/bin/quarto
    ##
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# 21 Bibliography

This vignette was generated using BiocStyle (Oleś, 2026) with knitr (Xie, 2014) and rmarkdown (Allaire, Xie, Dervieux et al., 2026) running behind the scenes.

Citations made with RefManageR (McLean, 2017).

[1] J. Allaire, Y. Xie, C. Dervieux, et al. rmarkdown: Dynamic Documents for R. R package version 2.31. 2026. URL: https://github.com/rstudio/rmarkdown.

[2] S. Arora, M. Morgan, M. Carlson, et al. GenomeInfoDb: Utilities for manipulating chromosome and other ‘seqname’ identifiers. 2017. DOI: 10.18129/B9.bioc.GenomeInfoDb.

[3] Bioconductor Package Maintainer, V. Obenchain, M. Love, et al. GenomicFiles: Distributed computing by file or by range. R package version 1.49.0. 2026. DOI: 10.18129/B9.bioc.GenomicFiles. URL: https://bioconductor.org/packages/GenomicFiles.

[4] BrainSpan. “Atlas of the Developing Human Brain [Internet]. Funded by ARRA Awards 1RC2MH089921-01, 1RC2MH090047-01, and 1RC2MH089929-01.” 2011. URL: http://www.brainspan.org/.

[5] L. Collado-Torres, A. E. Jaffe, and J. T. Leek. derfinderHelper: derfinder helper package. https://github.com/leekgroup/derfinderHelper - R package version 1.47.0. 2017. DOI: 10.18129/B9.bioc.derfinderHelper. URL: http://www.bioconductor.org/packages/derfinderHelper.

[6] L. Collado-Torres, A. Jaffe, and J. Leek. derfinderData: Processed BigWigs from BrainSpan for examples. R package version 2.31.0. 2026. DOI: 10.18129/B9.bioc.derfinderData. URL: https://bioconductor.org/packages/derfinderData.

[7] A. C. Frazee, S. Sabunciyan, K. D. Hansen, et al. “Differential expression analysis of RNA-seq data at single-base resolution”. In: Biostatistics 15 (3) (2014), pp. 413-426. DOI: 10.1093/biostatistics/kxt053. URL: http://biostatistics.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/3/413.long.

[8] F. Harrell Jr. Hmisc: Harrell Miscellaneous. R package version 5.2-5. 2026. DOI: 10.32614/CRAN.package.Hmisc. URL: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=Hmisc.

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