An R package for divergence analysis of omics data

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249002
• Publication Date: 2021-04-05T17:29:46Z
• Authors: Wikum Dinalankara; Qian Ke; Donald Geman; Luigi Marchionni
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 0303 health sciences; Science; Q; R; Genomics; 03 medical and health sciences; Neoplasms; Databases, Genetic; Medicine; Humans; Software; Research Article

Given the ever-increasing amount of high-dimensional and complex omics data becoming available, it is increasingly important to discover simple but effective methods of analysis. Divergence analysis transforms each entry of a high-dimensional omics profile into a digitized (binary or ternary) code based on the deviation of the entry from a given baseline population. This is a novel framework that is significantly different from existing omics data analysis methods: it allows digitization of continuous omics data at the univariate or multivariate level, facilitates sample level analysis, and is applicable on many different omics platforms. The divergence package, available on the R platform through the Bioconductor repository collection, provides easy-to-use functions for carrying out this transformation. Here we demonstrate how to use the package with data from the Cancer Genome Atlas.