Limma Analysis, BH Correction - adj. P-value all the same value
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8.7 years ago
Cale Reid • 0

Hi All,

I'm new to R and Limma, so apologies in advance for my naivete.

I'm analyzing some microarray data, and after applying the BH correction w/ topTable, I end up with a list of genes where the adj. P-value is apparently all the same. How do I interpret that? The P-values (unadjusted) vary significantly, but the ad. P-value for each gene is the same number (0.2800681 in my case).

I also note that some of my top results are labeled as normgene->intron (aka not real genes). Could this be the issue? I used the oligo package for initial processing of my data.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

R limma • 7.7k views
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If you make a histogram of the unadjusted p-values, what does the graph look like? Just upload that image somewhere and provide a link.

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Hey Devon. Thanks for your help. A histogram of the unadjusted P-values looks like this: http://imgur.com/SBJf1zu

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You'll need to show all of the genes, not just the top 100.

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Done: http://imgur.com/OpO1eiK

top_100 is a bit of a red herring - the 100 refers to my experimental condition, not the # of genes, but yeah - I definitely hadn't included all genes in the histogram before

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Wow, that looks like you should have some significant genes after correction. Do you get the same results if you manually run p.adjust() on the p-values?

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Here's what my table looks like after using p.adjust manually: http://imgur.com/GXXmpdw

P-value and adjusted p-value are from limma. The actual_adjusted p-value is from taking the limma provided p-value and using p.adjust with the BH correction.

Any thoughts? I can't figure out why they'd be different even though supposedly both limma and p.adjust are using BH.

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That's by far the craziest (bioinformatics related) thing I've seen this week. I'm pretty sure limma is even calling p.adjust() internally, so I have absolutely no clue why it's giving you those results. You might post this over on the bioconductor site, where Gordon Smyth (the limma author) can have a look.

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I posted on the bioconductor website - thanks again for your help. This is mystifying my partner and I as well so hopefully someone will know what's up!

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Would have been helpful to provide the link to your post on bioconductor's webpage.

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