svaseq: how many and which surrogate variables to pick
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nicklesd ▴ 10
@nicklesd-8688
Last seen 8.6 years ago
United States

I have a general question concerning surrogate variable analysis.

I have a large RNAseq data set on a heterogenous population and I'd like to identify the major hidden sources of variation so that I can adjust for them when performing differential gene expression analysis. svaseq() from the sva package finds 33 significant surrogate variables - that is a lot, I don't want to include all of  them in my model. Apparently, previously the sva package had a function called svaplot()  that allowed you do visualize the percent of variation explained by each surrogate variable (I envision something like a screeplot), but that function is not included in the package anymore. 

So my question is: how do I pick the surrogate variables that explain most of the variation? And how do I determine what a good number of variables to pick is? 

Thanks,

Doro

 

sva • 5.1k views
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Also wondering the same thing.   Did you find an answer, nicklesd?

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Jeff Leek ▴ 650
@jeff-leek-5015
Last seen 3.1 years ago
United States

You could try the alternative of using method = "be" in the software, that sometimes is a little better if the sample size of your experiment is very large. I removed the svaplot() function because it is a bit hard to judge how many surrogate variables to include by eye and while the automated ways aren't entirely better, at least they are reproducible. 

If you have a measured batch effect, one way some people select the number of surrogate variables is to pick the number of batches - but again that is a bit of a hack. 

To be honest this is a quite hard and open problem in the analysis of data from these experiments - how many artifact estimates to include. 

 

Jeff

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Has there been any progress in this problem?

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