Last updated: 2026-07-12

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Knit directory: immgenT-GP-analysis/analysis/

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This page documents the upstream matrix factorization step that produces the gene programs (GPs) analyzed throughout this site. The code is shown for reference; it was run on the UChicago RCC cluster and its outputs (the fitted flashier object) are the starting point for all downstream analyses.

Overview

We fit an empirical Bayes matrix factorization (EBMF) model to the full ImmGen-T scRNA-seq dataset using the flashier R package. The model decomposes the cells × genes expression matrix into a product of a loading matrix (cells × GPs) and a factor matrix (GPs × genes), learning up to 200 gene programs from the data.

Key steps

1. Normalization

Each cell’s counts are log-normalized using a cell-specific scale factor equal to the dataset-wide mean library size (mean(nCount_RNA)). This “shifted log” normalization keeps the data on a comparable scale across cells while preserving count structure.

2. Gene filtering

Before factorization, we remove genes that would confound or dilute the biological signal:

  • TCR genes (Trbv, Trav, Trgv, Trdv, …): highly variable but reflect V(D)J recombination, not transcriptional programs.
  • Mitochondrial genes (mt-): reflect cell quality rather than biology.
  • Ribosomal genes (Rpl, Rps, Mrpl, Mrps, Rsl): ubiquitously expressed housekeeping genes.
  • Pseudogenes / predicted genes (Gm…, …Rik, …-ps): annotation artifacts with unreliable quantification.
  • Unexpressed genes: genes with zero total counts across all cells.

3. Variance regularization

To set the noise level parameter S for flashier, we estimate the standard deviation of log-normalized Poisson noise:

n <- nrow(counts)              # number of cells
x <- rpois(1e7, 1/n)          # Poisson draws at rate 1/cell
s1 <- sd(log(x + 1))          # SD on the shifted-log scale

This gives a data-driven estimate of the baseline technical noise floor, passed to flash() as the S argument.

4. Flashier fit

fit <- flash(shifted_log_counts,
             ebnm_fn = c(ebnm_point_exponential, ebnm_point_laplace),
             var_type = 2,
             S = s1,
             backfit = TRUE,
             greedy_Kmax = 200L)
  • ebnm_point_exponential for loadings (cells): enforces non-negativity, so each cell’s contribution to a GP is a non-negative weight.
  • ebnm_point_laplace for factors (genes): allows both positive and negative gene weights within a GP, capturing genes that are up- or down-regulated together.
  • var_type = 2: estimates a separate residual variance for each gene (column-wise), accommodating the wide range of expression variability across genes.
  • backfit = TRUE: after the greedy initialization adds up to 200 factors, a backfitting pass refines all factors jointly to improve the overall fit.

The fitted object is saved as fit.Rds and used for all downstream GP analyses on this site.

Full script

# David Zemmour
# Usage: Rscript topic_flashier_20250212.R [path_to_seurat_object] [output_dir] [backfit (True/False)]

options(max.print=1000)
options(expressions = 50000)

args = commandArgs(TRUE)
path_to_seurat_object = args[1]
output_dir = args[2]
backfit_option = tolower(args[3])

if (backfit_option %in% c("true", "t")) {
    backfit_option = TRUE
} else if (backfit_option %in% c("false", "f")) {
    backfit_option = FALSE
}

if (!dir.exists(output_dir)) dir.create(output_dir, recursive = TRUE)

libs = c("fastTopics", "flashier", "Matrix", "Seurat", "BPCells")
sapply(libs, function(x) suppressMessages(library(x, character.only = TRUE, quietly = TRUE)))

so = readRDS(file = path_to_seurat_object)

norm_fac = mean(so$nCount_RNA)
so = NormalizeData(so, assay = "RNA", normalization.method = "LogNormalize", scale.factor = norm_fac)
counts = t(so[['RNA']]$counts)
shifted_log_counts = t(so[['RNA']]$data)

tcr_genes       = grepl(rownames(so), pattern = "Trbv|Trbd|Trbj|Trbc|Trav|Traj|Trac|Trgv|Trgd|Trgj|Trgc|Trdv|Trdj|Trdc")
gm_rik_genes    = grepl(rownames(so), pattern = "Gm|Rik$|\\-ps$")
ribo_genes      = grepl(rownames(so), pattern = "Rpl|Rps|Mrpl|Mrps|Rsl")
mt_genes        = grepl(rownames(so), pattern = "^mt-")
genes_not_expressed = rowSums(so[["RNA"]]$counts) == 0
genes_to_keep   = !(tcr_genes | gm_rik_genes | ribo_genes | mt_genes | genes_not_expressed)

shifted_log_counts = shifted_log_counts[, genes_to_keep]
counts             = counts[, genes_to_keep]

n  = nrow(counts)
x  = rpois(1e7, 1/n)
s1 = sd(log(x + 1))

fit = flash(shifted_log_counts,
            ebnm_fn = c(ebnm_point_exponential, ebnm_point_laplace),
            var_type = 2,
            S = s1,
            backfit = backfit_option,
            greedy_Kmax = 200L)

saveRDS(fit, file = sprintf("%s/fit.Rds", output_dir))

sessionInfo()
R version 4.5.1 (2025-06-13)
Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20
Running under: macOS Sequoia 15.6.1

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libBLAS.dylib 
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.5-arm64/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib;  LAPACK version 3.12.1

locale:
[1] en_CA/en_CA/en_CA/C/en_CA/en_CA

time zone: Asia/Shanghai
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] vctrs_0.7.3     cli_3.6.6       knitr_1.50      rlang_1.2.0    
 [5] xfun_0.55       stringi_1.8.7   otel_0.2.0      promises_1.5.0 
 [9] jsonlite_2.0.0  workflowr_1.7.2 glue_1.8.1      rprojroot_2.1.1
[13] git2r_0.36.2    htmltools_0.5.9 httpuv_1.6.16   sass_0.4.10    
[17] rmarkdown_2.30  evaluate_1.0.5  jquerylib_0.1.4 tibble_3.3.0   
[21] fastmap_1.2.0   yaml_2.3.12     lifecycle_1.0.5 stringr_1.6.0  
[25] compiler_4.5.1  fs_1.6.6        Rcpp_1.1.1-1.1  pkgconfig_2.0.3
[29] later_1.4.4     digest_0.6.39   R6_2.6.1        pillar_1.11.1  
[33] magrittr_2.0.5  bslib_0.9.0     tools_4.5.1     cachem_1.1.0