This is to address an inconvenience if this name ('plotMA') in BiocGenerics masks other functions of that name in a user's search path: in BiocGenerics 0.7.6, the generic function 'plotMA' has a method with signature 'ANY' that will be dispatched to if no more specific methods are found, and reminds users of the existence of functions with the same name in other packages. It has now also a more informative manual page. ------------------ # Example behaviour: library("limma") example("plotMA") library("BiocGenerics") plotMA(MA) # Error in plotMA(MA) : # Error from the generic function 'plotMA' defined in package 'BiocGenerics': no S4 method # definition for argument 'MA' of class 'MAList' was found. Did you perhaps mean calling the # function 'plotMA' from another package, e.g. 'limma'? In that case, please use the # syntax 'limma::plotMA'.