methylprep 1.3.0

Python-based Illumina methylation array preprocessing software

methylprep is a python package for processing Illumina methylation array data. View on ReadTheDocs.

Methylprep is part of the methyl-suite

methylprep is part of a methyl-suite of python packages that provide functions to process and analyze DNA methylation data from Illumina arrays (27, 450k, and EPIC/850k supported). The methylprep package contains functions for processing raw data files from arrays, or downloading (and processing) public data sets from GEO (the NIH Gene Expression Omnibus is a database repository), or from ArrayExpress. It contains both a command line interface (CLI) for processing data from local files, and a set of functions for building a custom pipeline in a jupyter notebook or python scripting environment. The aim is to offer a standard process, with flexibility for those who want it.

Related packages

You should install all three components, as they work together.

• methylcheck includes
  • quality control (QC) functions for filtering out unreliable probes, based on the published literature and outlier detection.
  • sample outlier detection
  • array level QC plots, based on Genome Studio functions
  • data visualization functions based on seaborn and matplotlib graphic libraries.
  • predict sex of human samples from probes
  • interactive method for assigning samples to groups, based on array data, in a Jupyter notebook
• methylize provides analysis functions
  • differentially methylated probe statistics (between treatment and control samples)
  • volcano plots (which probes are the most different)
  • manhattan plot (where in genome are the differences)

Installation

methylprep maintains configuration files for your Python package manager of choice: pipenv or pip. Conda install is coming soon.

pip install methylprep

---

Command line data processing

The most common use case is processing .idat files on a computer within a command line interface. This can also be done in a Jupyter notebook, but large data sets take hours to run and Jupyter will take longer to run these than command line.

process

python -m methylprep -v process -d <filepath> --all

The --all option applies the most common settings. Here are some specific options:

Argument	Type	Default	Description
data_dir	str, Path	REQUIRED	Base directory of the sample sheet and associated IDAT files
array_type	str	None	Code of the array type being processed. Possible values are custom, 27k, 450k, epic, and epic+. If not provided, the pacakage will attempt to determine the array type based on the number of probes in the raw data. If the batch contains samples from different array types, this may not work. Our data download function attempts to split different arrays into separate batches for processing to accommodate this.
manifest_filepath	str, Path	None	File path for the array's manifest file. If not provided, this file will be downloaded from a Life Epigenetics archive.
no_sample_sheet	bool	None	pass in "--no_sample_sheet" from command line to trigger sample sheet auto-generation. Sample names will be based on idat filenames. Useful for public GEO data sets that lack sample sheets.
sample_sheet_filepath	str, Path	None	File path of the project's sample sheet. If not provided, the package will try to find one based on the supplied data directory path.
sample_name	str to list	None	List of sample names to process, in the CLI format of -n sample1 sample2 sample3 etc. If provided, only those samples specified will be processed. Otherwise all samples found in the sample sheet will be processed.
export	bool	False	Add flag to export the processed data to CSV.
betas	bool	False	Add flag to output a pickled dataframe of beta values of sample probe values.
m_value	bool	False	Add flag to output a pickled dataframe of m_values of samples probe values.
batch_size	int	None	Optional: splits the batch into smaller sized sets for processing. Useful when processing hundreds of samples that can't fit into memory. Produces multiple output files. This is also used by the package to process batches that come from different array types.

data_dir is the one required field. If you do not provide the file path for the project's sample_sheet, it will find one based on the supplied data directory path. It will also auto detect the array type and download the corresponding manifest file for you.

run_pipeline (within a python interpreter, such as IDLE or Jupyter)

Run the complete methylation processing pipeline for the given project directory, optionally exporting the results to file.

Returns: A collection of DataContainer objects for each processed sample

from methylprep import run_pipeline

data_containers = run_pipeline(data_dir, array_type=None, export=False, manifest_filepath=None, sample_sheet_filepath=None, sample_names=None)

Note: All the same input parameters from command line apply to run_pipeline, except --all. Type dir(methylprep.run_pipeline) in an interactive python session to see details.

Note: By default, if run_pipeline is called as a function in a script, a list of SampleDataContainer objects is returned. However, if you specify betas=True or m_value=True, a dataframe of beta values or m-values is returned instead. All methylcheck functions are designed to work on a dataframe or a folder to the processed data generated by run_pipeline.

Getting help from command line

methylprep provides a command line interface (CLI) so the package can be used directly in bash/batchfile or windows/cmd scripts as part of building your custom processing pipeline.

All invocations of the methylprep CLI will provide contextual help, supplying the possible arguments and/or options available based on the invoked command. If you specify verbose logging the package will emit log output of DEBUG levels and above.

python -m methylprep

usage: methylprep [-h] [-v] {process,sample_sheet} ...

Utility to process methylation data from Illumina IDAT files

positional arguments:
  {process,sample_sheet}
    process             process help
    sample_sheet        sample sheet help

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose         Enable verbose logging

---

Other commands

The methylprep cli provides these top-level commands:

• process the main function: processing methylation data from idat files. Covered already.
• sample_sheet to find/read/validate a sample sheet and output its contents
• download download and process public data sets in NIH GEO or ArrayExpress collections. Provide the public Accession ID and it will handle the rest.
• composite download a bunch of datasets from a list of GEO ids, process them all, and combine into a large dataset
• alert scan GEO database and construct a CSV / dataframe of sample meta data and phenotypes for all studies matching a keyword

download

There are thousands of publically accessible DNA methylation data sets available via the GEO (US NCBI NIH) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/ and ArrayExpress (UK) https://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress/ websites. This function makes it easy to import them and build a reference library of methylation data.

The CLI now includes a download option. Supply the GEO ID or ArrayExpress ID and it will locate the files, download the idats, process them, and build a dataframe of the associated meta data. This dataframe format should be compatible with methylcheck and methylize.

Argument	Type	Default	Description
-h, --help		show this help message and exit
-d , --data_dir	str	[required path]	path to where the data series will be saved. Folder must exist already.
-i ID, --id ID	str	[required ID]	The dataset's reference ID (Starts with GSE for GEO or E-MTAB- for ArrayExpress)
-l LIST, --list LIST	multiple strings	optional	List of series IDs (can be either GEO or ArrayExpress), for partial downloading
-o, --dict_only	True	pass flag only	If passed, will only create dictionaries and not process any samples
-b BATCH_SIZE, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE	int	optional	Number of samples to process at a time, 100 by default.

When processing large batches of raw .idat files, specify --batch_size to break the processing up into smaller batches so the computer's memory won't overload. This is off by default when using process but is ON when using download and set to batch_size of 100. Set to 0 to force processing everything as one batch. The output files will be split into multiple files afterwards, and you can recomine them using methylcheck.load.

sample_sheet

Find and parse the sample sheet in a given directory and emit the details of each sample. This is not required for actually processing data.

>>> python -m methylprep sample_sheet

usage: methylprep sample_sheet -d DATA_DIR

optional arguments:

Argument	Type	Description
-h, --help		show this help message and exit
-d, --data_dir	string	Base directory of the sample sheet and associated IDAT files
-c, --create	bool	If specified, this creates a sample sheet from idats instead of parsing an existing sample sheet. The output file will be called "samplesheet.csv".
-o OUTPUT_FILE, --output_file OUTPUT_FILE	string	If creating a sample sheet, you can provide an optional output filename (CSV).

example of creating a sample sheet

~/methylprep$ python -m methylprep -v sample_sheet -d ~/GSE133062/GSE133062 --create
INFO:methylprep.files.sample_sheets:[!] Created sample sheet: ~/GSE133062/GSE133062/samplesheet.csv with 70 GSM_IDs
INFO:methylprep.files.sample_sheets:Searching for sample_sheet in ~/GSE133062/GSE133062
INFO:methylprep.files.sample_sheets:Found sample sheet file: ~/GSE133062/GSE133062/samplesheet.csv
INFO:methylprep.files.sample_sheets:Parsing sample_sheet
200861170112_R01C01
200882160083_R03C01
200861170067_R02C01
200498360027_R04C01
200498360027_R08C01
200861170067_R01C01
200861170072_R05C01
200498360027_R06C01
200861170072_R01C01
200861170067_R03C01
200882160070_R02C01
...

composite

A tool to build a data set from a list of public datasets. optional arguments:

Argument	Type	Description
-h, --help		show this help message and exit
-l LIST, --list LIST	filepath	A text file containg several GEO/ArrayExpress series ids. One ID per line in file. Note: The GEO Accession Viewer lets you export search results in this format.
-d DATA_DIR, --data_dir DATA_DIR	filepath	Folder where to save data (and read the ID list file).
-c, --control	bool	If flagged, this will only save samples that have the word "control" in their meta data.
-k KEYWORD --keyword KEYWORD	string	Only retain samples that include this keyword (e.g. blood) somewhere in their meta data.
-e, --export	bool	If passed, saves raw processing file data for each sample. (unlike meth-process, this is off by default)
-b, --betas	bool	If passed, output returns a dataframe of beta values for samples x probes. Local file beta_values.npy is also created.
-m, --m_value	bool	If passed, output returns a dataframe of M-values for samples x probes. Local file m_values.npy is also created.

alert

Function to check for new datasets on GEO and update a csv each time it is run. Usable as a weekly cron command line function. Saves data to a local csv to compare with old datasets in _meta.csv. Saves the dates of each dataset from GEO; calculates any new ones as new rows. updates csv.

Argument	Type	Description
keyword	string	Specify a word or phrase to narrow the search, such as "spleen blood".