Metabolomics Society Forum

On another matter, I’m wondering how to cut down on the number of features while still maintaining a low intensity threshold. Currently I have ~13,000 features. My goal is to be able to get my peak table into EZinfo, which is not able to handle my 1950x13,000 peak table. I am interested in minor compounds, so I don’t just want to filter by intensity. I have a few ideas, and I would love it if anyone could offer feedback.

One idea is to set strict filters during correspondence to cut down on the number of “false” features. I tried re-running XCMS on this same dataset but using different params. In particular, for correspondence, I changed the way sample groups are defined. Previously, all samples were in the same group. This time, I defined each sample as its own group (so ~600 groups). For PeakDensityParam, I set minFraction=2/3 & minSamples=2. My thinking was that a true feature would be present in all 3 injections of a sample, but I set the cutoff to 2 out of 3 to be on the safe side. In this way, I hoped to eliminate false features. At any rate, the correspondence step took much longer than before, and I ran out of memory before the script was completed. I tried a couple times with the same result.

Another idea is to filter out less informative markers based on variation of each feature across my sample set. My idea is to calculate the coefficient of variation for each marker across the entire dataset, and then exclude any markers below a certain CV value. I understand that p value and fold-change are often used for this kind of filtering, but as I understand it, these only make sense if the dataset contains multiple experimental groups. I don’t have any groups in my dataset; this is just an exploratory analysis. Does anyone have knowledge of or experience with filtering in this way? Any papers that you can suggest? How to determine an appropriate cutoff value for CV?

Thanks!

Hello folks,

Here's an update from my end.

I returned form vacation to find CoreyG's helpful responses. It turns out that I was not using "value='into'". I changed this param, and now my data look much better.

I've been using the Brunius batchCorr package, because I already know how to use R. However, given the characteristics of my dataset, I wonder if it is adequate.

Characteristics:
-- ~1950 files representing ~570 plant extracts (triplicate injection) + QC samples
-- 13 batches
-- All extracts are from the same species
-- The QC sample is an extract of about 40 accessions pooled together. However, it looks quantitatively different than most of the extracts in the sample set: the later eluting peaks of the QC sample are generally bigger while the early peaks are smaller. I don't think there are many qualitative differences between QC and other samples. However, I can imagine that these might translate into presence/absence differences in the peak table for minor compounds.

-- The extracts--other than QC--are not standardized by concentration or by equivalent weight of plant material. There is a range of weight of plant material that was extracted. Nonetheless, I do have for each sample the weight of plant material extracted and the weight of solvent used for extraction. From these values, I have generated a sample:solvent correction factor.
-- This is a pilot dataset and was not intended for publication.

My thinking is, now that the batch correction has been done, the next step is to apply the sample:solvent correction factor. The simplest thing to do would be, for each feature in a sample, divide the peak area value by the correction factor for that sample. However, I realize that detector response may not be linear in the range of interest for each feature; thus, the results may not be completely accurate. Nonetheless, I can't think of a better option. Any feedback on my approach?

devtools::install_github("sneumann/xcms", ref = "RELEASE_3_8")