cellpypes – Cell type pipes for R

DOI

Pipe your types!

Cellpypes uses the popular piping operator %>% to manually annotate cell types in single-cell RNA sequencing data. It can be applied to UMI data (e.g. 10x Genomics).

Define gene rules interactively:

Pype or pype not. There is no try.

Resolve detailed cell type subsets. Switch between cell type hierarchy levels in your analysis:

A Jedi’s strength lies in his marker genes.

Installation

Install cellpypes with the following commands:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("FelixTheStudent/cellpypes")

Citation

To cite cellpypes, download your favorite citation style from zenodo, type citation("cellpypes") in R or simply use:

Frauhammer, Felix, & Anders, Simon. (2022). cellpypes: Cell Type Pipes for R (0.1.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6555728

cellpypes input

cellpypes input has four slots:

Examples for cellpypes input:

# Object from scratch:
obj <- list(
  raw = counts,              # raw UMI, cells in columns
  neighbors = knn_ids,       # neighbor indices, cells in rows, k columns
  embed = umap,              # 2D embedding, cells in rows
  totalUMI = library_sizes   # colSums of raw, one value per cell
)

# Object from Seurat:
obj <- list(
   list(
    raw      =SeuratObject::GetAssayData(seurat, "counts"),
    neighbors=as(seurat@graphs[["RNA_nn"]], "dgCMatrix")>.1, # sometims "wknn"
    embed    =FetchData(seurat, dimension_names),
    totalUMI = seurat$nCount_RNA
  ) 
)

# Object from Seurat (experimental short-cut):
obj <- pype_from_seurat(seurat_object)

List of functions

Functions for manual classification:

Functions for pseudobulking and differential gene expression (DE) analysis:

Annotating PBMCs

Here, we annotate the same PBMC data set as in the popular Seurat tutorial, using the Seurat object seurat_object that comes out of it.

library(cellpypes)
library(tidyverse) # provides piping operator %>%


pype <- seurat_object %>%
  pype_from_seurat %>%
  rule("B",           "MS4A1",   ">", 1)                    %>%
  rule("CD14+ Mono",  "CD14",    ">", 1)                    %>%
  rule("CD14+ Mono",  "LYZ",     ">", 20)                   %>%
  rule("FCGR3A+ Mono","MS4A7",   ">", 2)                    %>%
  rule("NK",          "GNLY",    ">", 75)                   %>%
  rule("DC",          "FCER1A",  ">", 1)                    %>%
  rule("Platelet",    "PPBP",    ">", 30)                   %>%
  rule("T",           "CD3E",    ">", 3.5)                  %>% 
  rule("CD8+ T",      "CD8A",    ">", .8,  parent="T")      %>%
  rule("CD4+ T",      "CD4",     ">", .05, parent="T")      %>%
  rule("Naive CD4+",  "CCR7",    ">", 1.5, parent="CD4+ T") %>%
  rule("Memory CD4+",  "S100A4", ">", 13,  parent="CD4+ T")

plot_classes(pype)+ggtitle("PBMCs annotated with cellpypes")

All major cell types are annotated with cell pypes. Note how there are naive CD8+ T cells among the naive CD4 cells. While overlooked in the original tutorial, the marker-based nature of cellpypes revealed this. This is a good example for cellpype’s resolution limit: If UMAP cannot separate cells properly, cellpypes will also struggle – but at least it will be obvious. In practice, one would re-cluster the T cells and try to separate naive CD8+ from naive CD4+, or train a specialized machine learning algorithm to discriminate these two cell types in particular.

Understanding how cellpypes works

cellpypes works with classes defined by gene-based rules.

Whether your classes correspond to biologically relevant cell types is best answered in a passionate discussion on their marker genes you should have with your peers.

Until you are sure, “MS4A1+” is a better class name than “B cell”.

CP10K measure UMI fractions

cellpypes uses CP10K (counts per 10 thousand) in functions rule and feat. This is why and what that means:

Intuition behind cell pypes

cellpypes compares the expression of a cell and its nearest neighbors to a user-provided threshold, taking the uncertainty due to technical noise into account.

cellpypes assumes a cell’s nearest neighbors are transcriptionally highly similar, so that the technical noise dominates the biological variation. This means that the UMI counts for a given marker gene, say CD3E, came from cells that roughly had the same fraction of CD3E mRNA. We can not use this reasoning to infer the individual cell’s mRNA fraction reliably (which is why imputation introduces artifacts), but we can decide with reasonable confidence whether this cell was at least part of a subpopulation in which many cells expressed this gene highly. In other words:

In cellpypes logic, CD3E+ cells are virtually indistinguishable from cells with high CD3E expression. We just can’t prove they all had CD3E mRNA due to data sparsity.

Math/statistics behind cellpypes

Function demos

The following has a short demo of every function. Let’s say you have completed the Seurat pbmc2700 tutorial (or it’s shortcut), then you can start pyping from this pbmc object:

pbmc <- pype_from_seurat(seurat_object)

feat

Visualize marker gene expression with feat (short for feature plot):

pbmc %>% 
  feat(c("NKG7", "MS4A1"))

rule and plot_last

Create a few cell type rules and plot the most recent one with plot_last:

pbmc %>%
  rule("CD14+ Mono",  "CD14",    ">", 1)                    %>%
  rule("CD14+ Mono",  "LYZ",     ">", 20)                   %>%
  # uncomment this line to have a look at the LYZ+ rule:
  # plot_last()   
  rule("Tcell",       "CD3E",    ">", 3.5)                  %>% 
  rule("CD8+ T",      "CD8A",    ">", 1,  parent="Tcell")   %>%
  plot_last()

classify and plot_classes

Get cell type labels with classify or plot them directly with plot_classes (which wraps ggplot2 code around classify):

# rules for several cell types:
pbmc2 <- pbmc %>%
  rule("Bcell",       "MS4A1",   ">", 1)                    %>%
  rule("CD14+ Mono",  "CD14",    ">", 1)                    %>%
  rule("CD14+ Mono",  "LYZ",     ">", 20)                   %>%
  rule("Tcell",       "CD3E",    ">", 3.5)                  %>% 
  rule("CD8+ T",      "CD8A",    ">", 1,  parent="Tcell")   

pbmc2 %>% plot_classes()

pbmc2 %>% plot_classes(c("Tcell", "CD8+ T")) + ggtitle("T cells")

head(classify(pbmc2))
#> [1] Unassigned Bcell      Unassigned Unassigned Unassigned Unassigned
#> Levels: Bcell CD14+ Mono CD8+ T Unassigned

class_to_deseq2

Let’s imagine the PBMC data had multiple patients and treatment conditions (we made them up here for illustraion):

head(pbmc_meta)
#>    patient treatment
#> 1 patient1   treated
#> 2 patient5   treated
#> 3 patient1   control
#> 4 patient1   treated
#> 5 patient2   treated
#> 6 patient4   control

Every row in pbmc_meta corresponds to one cell in the pbmc object.

With cellpypes, you can directly pipe a given cell type into DESeq2 to create a DESeq2 DataSet (dds) and test it:

library(DESeq2)
dds <- pbmc %>% 
  rule("Bcell",   "MS4A1",   ">", 1)     %>%
  rule("Tcell",   "CD3E",    ">", 3.5)   %>% 
  class_to_deseq2(pbmc_meta, "Tcell", ~ treatment)
#> converting counts to integer mode
# test for differential expression and get DE genes:
dds <- DESeq(dds)
#> estimating size factors
#> estimating dispersions
#> gene-wise dispersion estimates
#> mean-dispersion relationship
#> final dispersion estimates
#> fitting model and testing
data.frame(results(dds)) %>% arrange(padj) %>% head
#>                  baseMean log2FoldChange     lfcSE         stat       pvalue
#> GPS1            8.6843786      1.8672676 0.4857916  3.843762680 0.0001211622
#> YWHAB         103.9834701      0.5056233 0.1303942  3.877651683 0.0001054696
#> AL627309.1      0.2517306     -0.4637681 2.2839665 -0.203053829 0.8390929591
#> AP006222.2      0.1505561      0.0171219 3.1165397  0.005493882 0.9956165384
#> RP11-206L10.2   0.0876921     -0.4637718 3.1165397 -0.148809843 0.8817036838
#> LINC00115       0.5822425      0.4344445 1.5861918  0.273891551 0.7841679649
#>                    padj
#> GPS1          0.8898756
#> YWHAB         0.8898756
#> AL627309.1    0.9998075
#> AP006222.2    0.9998075
#> RP11-206L10.2 0.9998075
#> LINC00115     0.9998075

In this dummy example, there is no real DE to find because we assigned cells randomly to treated/control.

pseudobulk and pseudobulk_id

Instead of piping into DESeq2 directly, you can also form pseudobulks with pseudobulk and helper function pseudobulk_id. This can be applied to any single-cell count data, independent from cellpypes. For example, counts could be seurat@assays$RNA@counts and meta_df could be selected columns from seurat@meta.data.

pbmc3 <- pbmc %>% rule("Tcell",   "CD3E",    ">", 3.5)
is_class <- classify(pbmc3) == "Tcell" 
counts <- pseudobulk(pbmc$raw[,is_class], 
                     pseudobulk_id(pbmc_meta[is_class,]))
counts[35:37, 1:3]
#> 3 x 3 Matrix of class "dgeMatrix"
#>            patient1.control patient1.treated patient2.control
#> AL645608.1                0                0                0
#> NOC2L                    13                6               16
#> KLHL17                    0                0                0

FAQ

Should I report bugs?

Yes. Do it. You can search similar problems or create new issues on gitHub. If you want to be nice and like fast help for free, try to provide a minimal example of your problem if possible. Make sure to include the version of your cellpypes installation, obtained e.g. with packageVersion("cellpypes").

Why are some cells unassigned?

Unassigned cells (grey) are not necessarily bad but a way to respect the signal-to-noise limit. Unassigned cells arise for two reasons:

How is DE different from cluster markers?

In cellpypes logic, Differential Expression (DE) analysis refers to comparing multiple samples (patients/mice/…) from at least two different groups (control/treated/…). These so called multi-condition multi-sample comparisons have individuals, not cells, as unit of replication, and give reliable p-values.

Finding cluster markers, in contrast, is circular and results in invalid p-values (which are useful for ranking marker genes, not for determining significance). The circularity comes from first using gene expression differences to find clusters, and then testing the null hypothesis that the same genes have no differences between clusters.

Why pseudobulks?

Pseudobulk approaches have been shown to perform as advertised, while many single-cell methods do not adjust p-values correctly and fail to control the false-discovery rate. Note that DESeq2, however, requires you to filter out lowly expressed genes.