Package 'scTenifoldKnk'

Title: In-Silico Knockout Experiments from Single-Cell Gene Regulatory Networks
Description: A workflow based on 'scTenifoldNet' to perform in-silico knockout experiments using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data from wild-type (WT) control samples as input. First, the package constructs a single-cell gene regulatory network (scGRN) and knocks out a target gene from the adjacency matrix of the WT scGRN by setting the gene’s outdegree edges to zero. Then, it compares the knocked out scGRN with the WT scGRN to identify differentially regulated genes, called virtual-knockout perturbed genes, which are used to assess the impact of the gene knockout and reveal the gene’s function in the analyzed cells.
Authors: Daniel Osorio [aut, cre] (ORCID: <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4424-8422>), Yan Zhong [aut, ctb], Guanxun Li [aut, ctb], Qian Xu [aut, ctb], Yongjian Yang [aut, ctb], Yanan Tian [aut, ctb], Robert Chapkin [aut, ctb], Jianhua Huang [aut, ctb], James J. Cai [aut, ctb, ths] (ORCID: <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8081-6725>)
Maintainer: Daniel Osorio <[email protected]>
License: GPL (>=2)
Version: 1.1
Built: 2026-07-10 21:52:08 UTC
Source: https://github.com/cailab-tamu/sctenifoldknk

Help Index


Evaluates gene differential regulation based on manifold alignment distances.

Description

Using the output of the non-linear manifold alignment, this function computes the Euclidean distance between the coordinates for the same gene in both conditions. Calculated distances are then transformed using Box-Cox power transformation, and standardized to ensure normality. P-values are assigned following the chi-square distribution over the fold-change of the squared distance computed with respect to the expectation.

Usage

dRegulation(manifoldOutput)

Arguments

manifoldOutput

A matrix. The output of the non-linear manifold alignment, a labeled matrix with two times the number of shared genes as rows (X_ genes followed by Y_ genes in the same order) and d number of columns.

Value

A data frame with 6 columns as follows:

  • gene A character vector with the gene id identified from the manifoldAlignment output.

  • distance A numeric vector of the Euclidean distance computed between the coordinates of the same gene in both conditions.

  • Z A numeric vector of the Z-scores computed after Box-Cox power transformation.

  • FC A numeric vector of the FC computed with respect to the expectation.

  • p.value A numeric vector of the p-values associated to the fold-changes, probabilities are assigned as P[X>x]P[X > x] using the Chi-square distribution with one degree of freedom.

  • p.adj A numeric vector of adjusted p-values using Benjamini & Hochberg (1995) FDR correction.

References

  • Benjamini, Y., and Yekutieli, D. (2001). The control of the false discovery rate in multiple testing under dependency. Annals of Statistics, 29, 1165-1188. doi: 10.1214/aos/1013699998.

Examples

library(scTenifoldKnk)

# Simulating a dataset following a negative binomial distribution with high sparsity (~67%)
nCells = 2000
nGenes = 100
set.seed(1)
X <- rnbinom(n = nGenes * nCells, size = 20, prob = 0.98)
X <- round(X)
X <- matrix(X, ncol = nCells)
rownames(X) <- c(paste0('ng', 1:90), paste0('mt-', 1:10))

# Performing single-cell quality control
qcOutput <- scQC(
  X = X,
  minLibSize = 30,
  removeOutlierCells = TRUE,
  minPCT = 0.05,
  maxMTratio = 0.1
)

# Computing 3 gene regulatory networks from subsamples of 500 cells
xNetworks <- scTenifoldNet::makeNetworks(
  X = qcOutput,
  nNet = 3,
  nCells = 500,
  nComp = 3,
  scaleScores = TRUE,
  symmetric = FALSE,
  q = 0.95
)

# Computing a K = 3 CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) Tensor Decomposition
tdOutput <- scTenifoldNet::tensorDecomposition(xNetworks, K = 3, maxError = 1e5, maxIter = 1e3)

## Not run: 
# Computing the manifold alignment
maOutput <- scTenifoldNet::manifoldAlignment(tdOutput$X, tdOutput$X)

# Evaluating differential regulation
drOutput <- dRegulation(maOutput)
head(drOutput)

# Plotting — genes with FDR < 0.05 colored in red
geneColor <- ifelse(drOutput$p.adj < 0.05, 'red', 'black')
qqnorm(drOutput$Z, main = 'Standardized Distance', pch = 16, col = geneColor)
qqline(drOutput$Z)

## End(Not run)

Plot KO network

Description

Generate and plot a KO-centered subnetwork from the output of scTenifoldKnk. The function selects genes with significant differential regulation (FDR < 0.05), extracts their interactions from the reconstructed WT network, filters edges by weight quantile, and displays the network using igraph. When annotate = TRUE the function queries enrichment databases via enrichR and overlays category pies on nodes with a legend of significant terms.

Usage

plotKO(
  X,
  gKO,
  q = 0.99,
  annotate = TRUE,
  nCategories = 20,
  fdrThreshold = 0.05
)

Arguments

X

A list. Output from scTenifoldKnk.

gKO

Character. Gene symbol of the simulated knockout gene.

q

Numeric. Edge-weight quantile used to threshold weak edges. Default: 0.99.

annotate

Logical. If TRUE, query enrichment databases and overlay category pies on enriched nodes. Default: TRUE.

nCategories

Integer. Maximum number of enrichment categories to show in the legend. Default: 20.

fdrThreshold

Numeric. Adjusted p-value cutoff (FDR) for reporting enriched terms. Default: 0.05.

Value

Invisibly returns NULL. Called for the side effect of plotting the network.

Examples

## Not run: 
library(scTenifoldKnk)

# Load example data
scRNAseq <- system.file("single-cell/example.csv", package = "scTenifoldKnk")
scRNAseq <- read.csv(scRNAseq, row.names = 1)

# Run scTenifoldKnk
output <- scTenifoldKnk(countMatrix = scRNAseq, gKO = "G100", qc_minLibSize = 0)

# Plot the KO-centered subnetwork with enrichment annotation
plotKO(output, gKO = "G100")

# Plot without enrichment annotation
plotKO(output, gKO = "G100", annotate = FALSE)

## End(Not run)

Performs single-cell data quality control

Description

This function performs quality control filters over the provided input matrix. It checks for minimum cell library size, mitochondrial ratio, outlier cells, and the fraction of cells where a gene is expressed.

Usage

scQC(
  X,
  minLibSize = 1000,
  removeOutlierCells = TRUE,
  minPCT = 0.05,
  maxMTratio = 0.1,
  label = NULL
)

Arguments

X

Raw counts matrix with cells as columns and genes (symbols) as rows.

minLibSize

An integer value. Defines the minimum library size required for a cell to be included in the analysis.

removeOutlierCells

A boolean value (TRUE/FALSE), if TRUE, the identified cells with library size greater than 1.58 IQR/sqrt(n) computed from the sample, are removed. For further details see: ?boxplot.stats

minPCT

A decimal value between 0 and 1. Defines the minimum fraction of cells where the gene needs to be expressed to be included in the analysis.

maxMTratio

A decimal value between 0 and 1. Defines the maximum ratio of mitochondrial reads (mitochondrial reads / library size) present in a cell to be included in the analysis. It's computed using the symbol genes starting with 'MT-' non-case sensitive.

label

Optional character label prepended to progress messages when running inside a pipeline.

Value

A dgCMatrix object with the cells and the genes that pass the quality control filters.

References

Ilicic, Tomislav, et al. "Classification of low quality cells from single-cell RNA-seq data." Genome biology 17.1 (2016): 29.

Examples

library(scTenifoldKnk)

# Simulating a dataset following a negative binomial distribution with high sparsity (~67%)
nCells = 2000
nGenes = 100
set.seed(1)
X <- rnbinom(n = nGenes * nCells, size = 20, prob = 0.98)
X <- round(X)
X <- matrix(X, ncol = nCells)
rownames(X) <- c(paste0('ng', 1:90), paste0('mt-', 1:10))

# Performing single-cell quality control
qcOutput <- scQC(
  X = X,
  minLibSize = 30,
  removeOutlierCells = TRUE,
  minPCT = 0.05,
  maxMTratio = 0.1
)

# Comparing dimensions before and after QC
dim(X)
dim(qcOutput)

scTenifoldKNK

Description

Predict gene perturbations using in-silico knockout experiments from single-cell gene regulatory networks.

Usage

scTenifoldKnk(
  countMatrix,
  gKO = NULL,
  qc = TRUE,
  qc_minLibSize = 1000,
  qc_removeOutlierCells = TRUE,
  qc_minPCT = 0.05,
  qc_maxMTratio = 0.1,
  nc_lambda = 0,
  nc_nNet = 10,
  nc_nCells = 500,
  nc_nComp = 3,
  nc_scaleScores = TRUE,
  nc_symmetric = FALSE,
  nc_q = 0.9,
  nc_priorNetwork = NULL,
  td_K = 3,
  td_maxIter = 1000,
  td_maxError = 1e-05,
  td_nDecimal = 3,
  ma_nDim = 2,
  nCores = parallel::detectCores()
)

Arguments

countMatrix

Raw counts matrix with cells as columns and genes (symbols) as rows.

gKO

Character. Gene symbol of the gene to knock out.

qc

A boolean value (TRUE/FALSE), if TRUE, a quality control is applied over the data.

qc_minLibSize

An integer value. Defines the minimum library size required for a cell to be included in the analysis.

qc_removeOutlierCells

A boolean value (TRUE/FALSE), if TRUE, cells with library size identified as outliers are removed. For further details see: ?boxplot.stats

qc_minPCT

A decimal value between 0 and 1. Defines the minimum fraction of cells where the gene needs to be expressed to be included in the analysis.

qc_maxMTratio

A decimal value between 0 and 1. Defines the maximum ratio of mitochondrial reads (mitochondrial reads / library size) present in a cell to be included in the analysis. It's computed using the symbol genes starting with 'MT-' non-case sensitive.

nc_lambda

A continuous value between 0 and 1. Defines the multiplicative value (1-lambda) to be applied over the weaker edge connecting two genes to maximize the adjacency matrix directionality.

nc_nNet

An integer value. The number of networks based on principal components regression to generate.

nc_nCells

An integer value. The number of cells to subsample each time to generate a network.

nc_nComp

An integer value. The number of principal components in PCA to generate the networks. Should be greater than 2 and lower than the total number of genes.

nc_scaleScores

A boolean value (TRUE/FALSE), if TRUE, the weights will be normalized such that the maximum absolute value is 1.

nc_symmetric

A boolean value (TRUE/FALSE), if TRUE, the weights matrix returned will be symmetric.

nc_q

A decimal value between 0 and 1. Defines the cut-off threshold of top q% relationships to be returned.

nc_priorNetwork

A data.frame containing a prior gene regulatory network. The data.frame must have two columns: 'regulators' and 'targets'. Default: NULL.

td_K

An integer value. Defines the number of rank-one tensors used to approximate the data using CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) Tensor Decomposition.

td_maxIter

An integer value. Defines the maximum number of iterations if error stay above td_maxError.

td_maxError

A decimal value between 0 and 1. Defines the relative Frobenius norm error tolerance.

td_nDecimal

An integer value indicating the number of decimal places to be used.

ma_nDim

An integer value. Defines the number of dimensions of the low-dimensional feature space to be returned from the non-linear manifold alignment.

nCores

An integer value. Defines the number of cores to be used.

Value

A list with 3 slots as follows:

  • tensorNetworks: The WT and KO weight-averaged denoised gene regulatory networks.

  • manifoldAlignment: The generated low-dimensional features result of the non-linear manifold alignment.

  • diffRegulation: The results of the differential regulation analysis.

Author(s)

Daniel Osorio <[email protected]>

Examples

library(scTenifoldKnk)

# Simulating a dataset following a negative binomial distribution with high sparsity (~67%)
nCells = 2000
nGenes = 100
set.seed(1)
X <- rnbinom(n = nGenes * nCells, size = 20, prob = 0.98)
X <- round(X)
X <- matrix(X, ncol = nCells)
rownames(X) <- c(paste0('ng', 1:90), paste0('mt-', 1:10))

## Not run: 
# Running scTenifoldKnk — simulating knockout of gene ng10
output <- scTenifoldKnk(
  countMatrix = X,
  gKO = "ng10",
  nc_nNet = 10,
  nc_nCells = 500,
  td_K = 3,
  qc_minLibSize = 30
)

# Structure of the output
str(output)

# Accessing the WT and KO gene regulatory networks
dim(output$tensorNetworks$WT)
dim(output$tensorNetworks$KO)

# Accessing the manifold alignment result
head(output$manifoldAlignment)

# Differential regulation results — top perturbed genes
head(output$diffRegulation, n = 10)

# Plotting the KO-centered subnetwork
plotKO(output, gKO = "ng10")

## End(Not run)