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Author

Benjamin M. Bolstad

Other affiliations: Affymetrix
Bio: Benjamin M. Bolstad is an academic researcher from University of California, Berkeley. The author has contributed to research in topics: Affymetrix GeneChip Operating Software & Gene chip analysis. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 16 publications receiving 30171 citations. Previous affiliations of Benjamin M. Bolstad include Affymetrix.

Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Details of the aims and methods of Bioconductor, the collaborative creation of extensible software for computational biology and bioinformatics, and current challenges are described.
Abstract: The Bioconductor project is an initiative for the collaborative creation of extensible software for computational biology and bioinformatics. The goals of the project include: fostering collaborative development and widespread use of innovative software, reducing barriers to entry into interdisciplinary scientific research, and promoting the achievement of remote reproducibility of research results. We describe details of our aims and methods, identify current challenges, compare Bioconductor to other open bioinformatics projects, and provide working examples.

12,142 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Three methods of performing normalization at the probe intensity level are presented: a one number scaling based algorithm and a method that uses a non-linear normalizing relation by comparing the variability and bias of an expression measure and the simplest and quickest complete data method is found to perform favorably.
Abstract: Motivation: When running experiments that involve multiple high density oligonucleotide arrays, it is important to remove sources of variation between arrays of non-biological origin. Normalization is a process for reducing this variation. It is common to see non-linear relations between arrays and the standard normalization provided by Affymetrix does not perform well in these situations. Results: We present three methods of performing normalization at the probe intensity level. These methods are called complete data methods because they make use of data from all arrays in an experiment to form the normalizing relation. These algorithms are compared to two methods that make use of a baseline array: a one number scaling based algorithm and a method that uses a non-linear normalizing relation by comparing the variability and bias of an expression measure. Two publicly available datasets are used to carry out the comparisons. The simplest and quickest complete data method is found to perform favorably. Availabilty: Software implementing all three of the complete data normalization methods is available as part of the R package Affy, which is a part of the Bioconductor project http://www.bioconductor.org. Contact: bolstad@stat.berkeley.edu Supplementary information: Additional figures may be found at http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/∼bolstad/normalize/ index.html

8,324 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is found that the performance of the current version of the default expression measure provided by Affymetrix Microarray Suite can be significantly improved by the use of probe level summaries derived from empirically motivated statistical models.
Abstract: High density oligonucleotide array technology is widely used in many areas of biomedical research for quantitative and highly parallel measurements of gene expression. Affymetrix GeneChip arrays are the most popular. In this technology each gene is typically represented by a set of 11–20 pairs of probes. In order to obtain expression measures it is necessary to summarize the probe level data. Using two extensive spike-in studies and a dilution study, we developed a set of tools for assessing the effectiveness of expression measures. We found that the performance of the current version of the default expression measure provided by Affymetrix Microarray Suite can be significantly improved by the use of probe level summaries derived from empirically motivated statistical models. In particular, improvements in the ability to detect differentially expressed genes are demonstrated.

5,119 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The affy package is an R package of functions and classes for the analysis of oligonucleotide arrays manufactured by Affymetrix that provides the user with extreme flexibility when carrying out an analysis and make it possible to access and manipulate probe intensity data.
Abstract: Motivation: The processing of the Affymetrix GeneChip data has been a recent focus for data analysts. Alternatives to the original procedure have been proposed and some of these new methods are widely used. Results: The affy package is an R package of functions and classes for the analysis of oligonucleotide arrays manufactured by Affymetrix. The package is currently in its second release, affy provides the user with extreme flexibility when carrying out an analysis and make it possible to access and manipulate probe intensity data. In this paper, we present the main classes and functions in the package and demonstrate how they can be used to process probe-level data. We also demonstrate the importance of probe-level analysis when using the Affymetrix GeneChip platform.

4,822 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A preprocessing algorithm, frozen RMA (fRMA), which allows one to analyze microarrays individually or in small batches and then combine the data for analysis, and it is found that fRMA is comparable to RMA when the data are analyzed as a single batch and outperforms R MA when analyzing multiple batches.
Abstract: Robust multiarray analysis (RMA) is the most widely used preprocessing algorithm for Affymetrix and Nimblegen gene expression microarrays. RMA performs background correction, normalization, and summarization in a modular way. The last 2 steps require multiple arrays to be analyzed simultaneously. The ability to borrow information across samples provides RMA various advantages. For example, the summarization step fits a parametric model that accounts for probe effects, assumed to be fixed across arrays, and improves outlier detection. Residuals, obtained from the fitted model, permit the creation of useful quality metrics. However, the dependence on multiple arrays has 2 drawbacks: (1) RMA cannot be used in clinical settings where samples must be processed individually or in small batches and (2) data sets preprocessed separately are not comparable. We propose a preprocessing algorithm, frozen RMA (fRMA), which allows one to analyze microarrays individually or in small batches and then combine the data for analysis. This is accomplished by utilizing information from the large publicly available microarray databases. In particular, estimates of probe-specific effects and variances are precomputed and frozen. Then, with new data sets, these are used in concert with information from the new arrays to normalize and summarize the data. We find that fRMA is comparable to RMA when the data are analyzed as a single batch and outperforms RMA when analyzing multiple batches. The methods described here are implemented in the R package fRMA and are currently available for download from the software section of http://rafalab.jhsph.edu.

567 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work presents DESeq2, a method for differential analysis of count data, using shrinkage estimation for dispersions and fold changes to improve stability and interpretability of estimates, which enables a more quantitative analysis focused on the strength rather than the mere presence of differential expression.
Abstract: In comparative high-throughput sequencing assays, a fundamental task is the analysis of count data, such as read counts per gene in RNA-seq, for evidence of systematic changes across experimental conditions. Small replicate numbers, discreteness, large dynamic range and the presence of outliers require a suitable statistical approach. We present DESeq2, a method for differential analysis of count data, using shrinkage estimation for dispersions and fold changes to improve stability and interpretability of estimates. This enables a more quantitative analysis focused on the strength rather than the mere presence of differential expression. The DESeq2 package is available at http://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/DESeq2.html .

47,038 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: EdgeR as mentioned in this paper is a Bioconductor software package for examining differential expression of replicated count data, which uses an overdispersed Poisson model to account for both biological and technical variability and empirical Bayes methods are used to moderate the degree of overdispersion across transcripts, improving the reliability of inference.
Abstract: Summary: It is expected that emerging digital gene expression (DGE) technologies will overtake microarray technologies in the near future for many functional genomics applications. One of the fundamental data analysis tasks, especially for gene expression studies, involves determining whether there is evidence that counts for a transcript or exon are significantly different across experimental conditions. edgeR is a Bioconductor software package for examining differential expression of replicated count data. An overdispersed Poisson model is used to account for both biological and technical variability. Empirical Bayes methods are used to moderate the degree of overdispersion across transcripts, improving the reliability of inference. The methodology can be used even with the most minimal levels of replication, provided at least one phenotype or experimental condition is replicated. The software may have other applications beyond sequencing data, such as proteome peptide count data. Availability: The package is freely available under the LGPL licence from the Bioconductor web site (http://bioconductor.org).

29,413 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The philosophy and design of the limma package is reviewed, summarizing both new and historical features, with an emphasis on recent enhancements and features that have not been previously described.
Abstract: limma is an R/Bioconductor software package that provides an integrated solution for analysing data from gene expression experiments. It contains rich features for handling complex experimental designs and for information borrowing to overcome the problem of small sample sizes. Over the past decade, limma has been a popular choice for gene discovery through differential expression analyses of microarray and high-throughput PCR data. The package contains particularly strong facilities for reading, normalizing and exploring such data. Recently, the capabilities of limma have been significantly expanded in two important directions. First, the package can now perform both differential expression and differential splicing analyses of RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data. All the downstream analysis tools previously restricted to microarray data are now available for RNA-seq as well. These capabilities allow users to analyse both RNA-seq and microarray data with very similar pipelines. Second, the package is now able to go past the traditional gene-wise expression analyses in a variety of ways, analysing expression profiles in terms of co-regulated sets of genes or in terms of higher-order expression signatures. This provides enhanced possibilities for biological interpretation of gene expression differences. This article reviews the philosophy and design of the limma package, summarizing both new and historical features, with an emphasis on recent enhancements and features that have not been previously described.

22,147 citations

Posted ContentDOI
17 Nov 2014-bioRxiv
TL;DR: This work presents DESeq2, a method for differential analysis of count data, using shrinkage estimation for dispersions and fold changes to improve stability and interpretability of estimates, which enables a more quantitative analysis focused on the strength rather than the mere presence of differential expression.
Abstract: In comparative high-throughput sequencing assays, a fundamental task is the analysis of count data, such as read counts per gene in RNA-Seq data, for evidence of systematic changes across experimental conditions. Small replicate numbers, discreteness, large dynamic range and the presence of outliers require a suitable statistical approach. We present DESeq2, a method for differential analysis of count data. DESeq2 uses shrinkage estimation for dispersions and fold changes to improve stability and interpretability of the estimates. This enables a more quantitative analysis focused on the strength rather than the mere presence of differential expression and facilitates downstream tasks such as gene ranking and visualization. DESeq2 is available as an R/Bioconductor package.

17,014 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An R package, clusterProfiler that automates the process of biological-term classification and the enrichment analysis of gene clusters and can be easily extended to other species and ontologies is presented.
Abstract: Increasing quantitative data generated from transcriptomics and proteomics require integrative strategies for analysis Here, we present an R package, clusterProfiler that automates the process of biological-term classification and the enrichment analysis of gene clusters The analysis module and visualization module were combined into a reusable workflow Currently, clusterProfiler supports three species, including humans, mice, and yeast Methods provided in this package can be easily extended to other species and ontologies The clusterProfiler package is released under Artistic-20 License within Bioconductor project The source code and vignette are freely available at http://bioconductororg/packages/release/bioc/html/clusterProfilerhtml

16,644 citations