Author: Stefano Mangiola
Date: 2026-04-28

# Side-by-side comparison with standard interfaces

Stefano Mangiola

#### 2026-04-28

#### Package

tidybulk 2.2.0

tidybulk is a powerful R package designed for modular transcriptomic data analysis that brings transcriptomics to the tidyverse.

## 0.1 Why tidybulk?

Tidybulk provides a unified interface for comprehensive transcriptomic data analysis with seamless integration of SummarizedExperiment objects and tidyverse principles. It streamlines the entire workflow from raw data to biological insights.

### 0.1.1 Scientific Citation

Mangiola, Stefano, Ramyar Molania, Ruining Dong, Maria A. Doyle, and Anthony T. Papenfuss. 2021. “Tidybulk: An R tidy framework for modular transcriptomic data analysis.” Genome Biology 22 (42). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-020-02233-7

Genome Biology - tidybulk: an R tidy framework for modular transcriptomic data analysis

In this vignette we will use the `airway` dataset, a `SummarizedExperiment` object containing RNA-seq data from an experiment studying the effect of dexamethasone treatment on airway smooth muscle cells. This dataset is available in the airway package.

    library(airway)
    data(airway)

This workflow, will use the tidySummarizedExperiment package to manipulate the data in a `tidyverse` fashion. This approach streamlines the data manipulation and analysis process, making it more efficient and easier to understand.

    library(tidySummarizedExperiment)

Here we will add a gene symbol column to the `airway` object. This will be used to interpret the differential expression analysis, and to deconvolve the cellularity.

    library(org.Hs.eg.db)

    ## Loading required package: AnnotationDbi

    ##
    ## Attaching package: 'AnnotationDbi'

    ## The following object is masked from 'package:dplyr':
    ##
    ##     select

    ##

    library(AnnotationDbi)

    # Add gene symbol and entrez
    airway <-
      airway |>

      mutate(entrezid = mapIds(org.Hs.eg.db,
                                          keys = gene_name,
                                          keytype = "SYMBOL",
                                          column = "ENTREZID",
                                          multiVals = "first"
    ))

    ## 'select()' returned 1:many mapping between keys and columns

    detach("package:org.Hs.eg.db", unload = TRUE)
    detach("package:AnnotationDbi", unload = TRUE)

# 1 Side-by-side Comparison with Standard Interfaces

This vignette demonstrates how tidybulk compares to standard R/Bioconductor approaches for transcriptomic data analysis. We’ll show the same analysis performed using both tidybulk (tidyverse-style) and traditional methods side by side.

## 1.1 Data Overview

We will use the `airway` dataset, a `SummarizedExperiment` object containing RNA-seq data from an experiment studying the effect of dexamethasone treatment on airway smooth muscle cells:

    airway

    ## class: RangedSummarizedExperiment
    ## dim: 63677 8
    ## metadata(2): '' latest_mutate_scope_report
    ## assays(1): counts
    ## rownames(63677): ENSG00000000003 ENSG00000000005 ... ENSG00000273492
    ##   ENSG00000273493
    ## rowData names(10): gene_id gene_name ... seq_coord_system symbol
    ## colnames(8): SRR1039508 SRR1039509 ... SRR1039520 SRR1039521
    ## colData names(9): SampleName cell ... Sample BioSample

Loading `tidySummarizedExperiment` makes the `SummarizedExperiment` objects compatible with tidyverse tools while maintaining its `SummarizedExperiment` nature. This is useful because it allows us to use the `tidyverse` tools to manipulate the data.

    class(airway)

    ## [1] "RangedSummarizedExperiment"
    ## attr(,"package")
    ## [1] "SummarizedExperiment"

### 1.1.1 Prepare Data for Analysis

Before analysis, we need to ensure our variables are in the correct format:

    # Convert dex to factor for proper differential expression analysis
    airway = airway |>
      mutate(dex = as.factor(dex))

## 1.2 Step 1: Aggregate Duplicated Transcripts

tidybulk provides the `aggregate_duplicates` function to aggregate duplicated transcripts (e.g., isoforms, ensembl). For example, we often have to convert ensembl symbols to gene/transcript symbol, but in doing so we have to deal with duplicates. `aggregate_duplicates` takes a tibble and column names (as symbols; for `sample`, `transcript` and `count`) as arguments and returns a tibble with transcripts with the same name aggregated. All the rest of the columns are appended, and factors and boolean are appended as characters.

> Transcript aggregation is a standard bioinformatics approach for gene-level summarization.

TidyTranscriptomics

    rowData(airway)$gene_name = rownames(airway)
    airway.aggr = airway |> aggregate_duplicates(.transcript = gene_name)

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    temp = data.frame(
        symbol = dge_list$genes$symbol,
        dge_list$counts
    )
    dge_list.nr <- by(temp, temp$symbol,
        function(df)
            if(length(df[1,1])>0)
                matrixStats:::colSums(as.matrix(df[,-1]))
    )
    dge_list.nr <- do.call("rbind", dge_list.nr)
    colnames(dge_list.nr) <- colnames(dge_list)

## 1.3 Step 2: Scale Abundance

We may want to compensate for sequencing depth, scaling the transcript abundance (e.g., with TMM algorithm, Robinson and Oshlack doi.org/10.1186/gb-2010-11-3-r25). `scale_abundance` takes a tibble, column names (as symbols; for `sample`, `transcript` and `count`) and a method as arguments and returns a tibble with additional columns with scaled data as `<NAME OF COUNT COLUMN>_scaled`.

> Normalization is crucial for comparing expression levels across samples with different library sizes.

TidyTranscriptomics

    airway.norm = airway |> identify_abundant(factor_of_interest = dex) |> scale_abundance()

    ## Warning: The `factor_of_interest` argument of `identify_abundant()` is deprecated as of
    ## tidybulk 2.0.0.
    ## ℹ Please use the `formula_design` argument instead.
    ## ℹ The argument 'factor_of_interest' is deprecated and will be removed in a
    ##   future release. Please use the 'design' or 'formula_design' argument instead.
    ## This warning is displayed once per session.
    ## Call `lifecycle::last_lifecycle_warnings()` to see where this warning was
    ## generated.

    ## tidybulk says: the sample with largest library size SRR1039517 was chosen as reference for scaling

    ## calcNormFactors has been renamed to normLibSizes

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    library(edgeR)

    dgList <- DGEList(count_m=x,group=group)
    keep <- filterByExpr(dgList)
    dgList <- dgList[keep,,keep.lib.sizes=FALSE]
    # ... additional processing steps ...
    dgList <- calcNormFactors(dgList, method="TMM")
    norm_counts.table <- cpm(dgList)

We can easily plot the scaled density to check the scaling outcome. On the x axis we have the log scaled counts, on the y axes we have the density, data is grouped by sample and coloured by treatment.

    airway.norm |>
        ggplot(aes(counts_scaled + 1, group=.sample, color=`dex`)) +
        geom_density() +
        scale_x_log10() +
        my_theme

## 1.4 Step 3: Filter Variable Transcripts

We may want to identify and filter variable transcripts to focus on the most informative features.

> Variable transcript filtering helps reduce noise and focuses analysis on the most informative features.

TidyTranscriptomics

    airway.norm.variable = airway.norm |> keep_variable()

    ## Getting the 500 most variable genes

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    library(edgeR)

    x = norm_counts.table

    s <- rowMeans((x-rowMeans(x))^2)
    o <- order(s,decreasing=TRUE)
    x <- x[o[1L:top],,drop=FALSE]

    norm_counts.table = norm_counts.table[rownames(x)]

    norm_counts.table$cell_type = tibble_counts[
        match(
            tibble_counts$sample,
            rownames(norm_counts.table)
        ),
        "cell"
    ]

## 1.5 Step 4: Reduce Dimensions

We may want to reduce the dimensions of our data, for example using PCA or MDS algorithms. `reduce_dimensions` takes a tibble, column names (as symbols; for `sample`, `transcript` and `count`) and a method (e.g., MDS or PCA) as arguments and returns a tibble with additional columns for the reduced dimensions.

> Dimensionality reduction helps visualize high-dimensional data and identify patterns.

MDS (Robinson et al., 10.1093/bioinformatics/btp616)

TidyTranscriptomics

    airway.norm.MDS =
      airway.norm |>
      reduce_dimensions(method="MDS", .dims = 2)

    ## Getting the 500 most variable genes

    ## [1] "MDS result_df colnames: sample, 1, 2"

    ## tidybulk says: to access the raw results do `metadata(.)$tidybulk$MDS`

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    library(limma)

    count_m_log = log(count_m + 1)
    cmds = limma::plotMDS(count_m_log, ndim = 3, plot = FALSE)

    cmds = cmds %$%
        cmdscale.out |>
        setNames(sprintf("Dim%s", 1:6))

    cmds$cell_type = tibble_counts[
        match(tibble_counts$sample, rownames(cmds)),
        "cell"
    ]

On the x and y axes axis we have the reduced dimensions 1 to 3, data is coloured by treatment.

    airway.norm.MDS |> pivot_sample()  |> dplyr::select(contains("Dim"), everything())

    airway.norm.MDS |>
        pivot_sample() |>
      GGally::ggpairs(columns = 9:11, ggplot2::aes(colour=`dex`))

PCA

TidyTranscriptomics

    airway.norm.PCA =
      airway.norm |>
      reduce_dimensions(method="PCA", .dims = 2)

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    count_m_log = log(count_m + 1)
    pc = count_m_log |> prcomp(scale = TRUE)
    variance = pc$sdev^2
    variance = (variance / sum(variance))[1:6]
    pc$cell_type = counts[
        match(counts$sample, rownames(pc)),
        "cell"
    ]

On the x and y axes axis we have the reduced dimensions 1 to 3, data is coloured by treatment.

    airway.norm.PCA |> pivot_sample() |> dplyr::select(contains("PC"), everything())

    airway.norm.PCA |>
         pivot_sample() |>
      GGally::ggpairs(columns = 11:13, ggplot2::aes(colour=`dex`))

## 1.6 Step 5: Rotate Dimensions

We may want to rotate the reduced dimensions (or any two numeric columns really) of our data, of a set angle. `rotate_dimensions` takes a tibble, column names (as symbols; for `sample`, `transcript` and `count`) and an angle as arguments and returns a tibble with additional columns for the rotated dimensions. The rotated dimensions will be added to the original data set as `<NAME OF DIMENSION> rotated <ANGLE>` by default, or as specified in the input arguments.

> Dimension rotation can help align data with biological axes of interest.

> TidyTranscriptomics

    airway.norm.MDS.rotated =
      airway.norm.MDS |>
        rotate_dimensions(`Dim1`, `Dim2`, rotation_degrees = 45)

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    rotation = function(m, d) {
        r = d * pi / 180
        ((bind_rows(
            c(`1` = cos(r), `2` = -sin(r)),
            c(`1` = sin(r), `2` = cos(r))
        ) |> as_matrix()) %*% m)
    }
    mds_r = pca |> rotation(rotation_degrees)
    mds_r$cell_type = counts[
        match(counts$sample, rownames(mds_r)),
        "cell"
    ]

Original On the x and y axes axis we have the first two reduced dimensions, data is coloured by treatment.

    airway.norm.MDS.rotated |>
        ggplot(aes(x=`Dim1`, y=`Dim2`, color=`dex` )) +
      geom_point() +
      my_theme

Rotated On the x and y axes axis we have the first two reduced dimensions rotated of 45 degrees, data is coloured by treatment.

    airway.norm.MDS.rotated |>
        pivot_sample() |>
        ggplot(aes(x=`Dim1_rotated_45`, y=`Dim2_rotated_45`, color=`dex` )) +
      geom_point() +
      my_theme

## 1.7 Step 8: Test Differential Abundance

We may want to test for differential transcription between sample-wise factors of interest (e.g., with edgeR). `test_differential_expression` takes a tibble, column names (as symbols; for `sample`, `transcript` and `count`) and a formula representing the desired linear model as arguments and returns a tibble with additional columns for the statistics from the hypothesis test (e.g., log fold change, p-value and false discovery rate).

> Differential expression analysis identifies genes that are significantly different between conditions.

> TidyTranscriptomics

    airway.de =
        airway |>
        test_differential_expression( ~ dex, method = "edgeR_quasi_likelihood") |>
      pivot_transcript()
    airway.de

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    library(edgeR)

    dgList <- DGEList(counts=counts_m,group=group)
    keep <- filterByExpr(dgList)
    dgList <- dgList[keep,,keep.lib.sizes=FALSE]
    dgList <- calcNormFactors(dgList)
    design <- model.matrix(~group)
    dgList <- estimateDisp(dgList,design)
    fit <- glmQLFit(dgList,design)
    qlf <- glmQLFTest(fit,coef=2)
    topTags(qlf, n=Inf)

The functon `test_differential_expression` operated with contrasts too. The constrasts hve the name of the design matrix (generally )

    airway.de =
        airway |>
        identify_abundant(factor_of_interest = dex) |>
        test_differential_expression(
            ~ 0 + dex,
            .contrasts = c( "dexuntrt - dextrt"),
            method = "edgeR_quasi_likelihood"
        ) |>
      pivot_transcript()

## 1.8 Step 6: Adjust for Unwanted Variation

We may want to adjust `counts` for (known) unwanted variation. `adjust_abundance` takes as arguments a tibble, column names (as symbols; for `sample`, `transcript` and `count`) and a formula representing the desired linear model where the first covariate is the factor of interest and the second covariate is the unwanted variation, and returns a tibble with additional columns for the adjusted counts as `<COUNT COLUMN>_adjusted`. At the moment just an unwanted covariates is allowed at a time.

> Batch effect correction is important for removing technical variation that could confound biological signals.

TidyTranscriptomics

    airway.norm.adj =
        airway.norm     |> adjust_abundance(    .factor_unwanted = cell, .factor_of_interest = dex, method="combat")

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    library(sva)

    count_m_log = log(count_m + 1)

    design =
            model.matrix(
                object = ~ factor_of_interest + batch,
                data = annotation
            )

    count_m_log.sva =
        ComBat(
                batch = design[,2],
                mod = design,
                ...
            )

    count_m_log.sva = ceiling(exp(count_m_log.sva) -1)
    count_m_log.sva$cell_type = counts[
        match(counts$sample, rownames(count_m_log.sva)),
        "cell"
    ]

## 1.9 Deconvolve `Cell type composition`

We may want to infer the cell type composition of our samples (with the algorithm Cibersort; Newman et al., 10.1038/nmeth.3337). `deconvolve_cellularity` takes as arguments a tibble, column names (as symbols; for `sample`, `transcript` and `count`) and returns a tibble with additional columns for the adjusted cell type proportions.

Note: Cellularity deconvolution requires gene symbols that match the reference data. The airway dataset uses Ensembl IDs, so this example is commented out.

TidyTranscriptomics

    # Requires gene symbols that match reference data
    # airway.cibersort =
    #   airway |>
    #   deconvolve_cellularity( cores=1, prefix = "cibersort__") |>
    #   pivot_sample()

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    source("CIBERSORT.R")
    count_m |> write.table("mixture_file.txt")
    results <- CIBERSORT(
        "sig_matrix_file.txt",
        "mixture_file.txt",
        perm=100, QN=TRUE
    )
    results$cell_type = tibble_counts[
        match(tibble_counts$sample, rownames(results)),
        "cell"
    ]

Note: The plotting code is commented out as the deconvolution step is not executed.

    # airway.cibersort |>
    #   pivot_longer(
    #       names_to= "Cell_type_inferred",
    #       values_to = "proportion",
    #       names_prefix ="cibersort__",
    #       cols=contains("cibersort__")
    #   ) |>
    #   ggplot(aes(x=Cell_type_inferred, y=proportion, fill=cell)) +
    #   geom_boxplot() +
    #   facet_wrap(~cell) +
    #   my_theme +
    #   theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1, vjust = 0.5), aspect.ratio=1/5)

## 1.10 Step 7: Cluster Samples

We may want to cluster our samples based on the transcriptomic profiles. `cluster_elements` takes as arguments a tibble, column names (as symbols; for `sample`, `transcript` and `count`) and returns a tibble with additional columns for the cluster labels.

> Clustering helps identify groups of samples with similar expression profiles.

TidyTranscriptomics

    airway.norm.cluster =
        airway.norm |>
        cluster_elements(method="kmeans", centers = 2)

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    library(stats)

    count_m_log = log(count_m + 1)
    count_m_log_centered = count_m_log - rowMeans(count_m_log)

    kmeans_result = kmeans(t(count_m_log_centered), centers = 2)

    cluster_labels = kmeans_result$cluster

## 1.11 Step 9: Test Differential Abundance (Alternative Method)

We may want to test for differential abundance between conditions. `test_differential_abundance` takes as arguments a tibble, column names (as symbols; for `sample`, `transcript` and `count`) and a formula representing the desired linear model, and returns a tibble with additional columns for the statistics from the hypothesis test (e.g., log fold change, p-value and false discovery rate).

> This demonstrates an alternative approach to differential expression analysis.

TidyTranscriptomics

    airway.norm.de =
        airway.norm |>
        test_differential_abundance(~ dex, method="edgeR_quasi_likelihood")

    ## tidybulk says: The design column names are "(Intercept), dexuntrt"

    ## calcNormFactors has been renamed to normLibSizes

    ## tidybulk says: to access the DE object do `metadata(.)$tidybulk$edgeR_quasi_likelihood_object`
    ## tidybulk says: to access the raw results (fitted GLM) do `metadata(.)$tidybulk$edgeR_quasi_likelihood_fit`

Standard procedure (comparative purpose)

    library(edgeR)

    count_m_log = log(count_m + 1)

    design = model.matrix(~ dex, data = annotation)

    dge = DGEList(counts = count_m)
    dge = calcNormFactors(dge)
    dge = estimateDisp(dge, design)

    fit = glmQLFit(dge, design)
    qlf = glmQLFTest(fit, coef=2)

    results = topTags(qlf, n = Inf)

## 1.12 Conclusion

Tidybulk provides a unified interface for comprehensive transcriptomic data analysis with seamless integration of SummarizedExperiment objects and tidyverse principles. It streamlines the entire workflow from raw data to biological insights while maintaining compatibility with standard Bioconductor practices.

    sessionInfo()

    ## R version 4.6.0 RC (2026-04-17 r89917)
    ## Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
    ## Running under: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
    ##
    ## Matrix products: default
    ## BLAS:   /home/biocbuild/bbs-3.23-bioc/R/lib/libRblas.so
    ## LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.12.0  LAPACK version 3.12.0
    ##
    ## locale:
    ##  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
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    ##  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
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    ##  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
    ## [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
    ##
    ## time zone: America/New_York
    ## tzcode source: system (glibc)
    ##
    ## attached base packages:
    ## [1] stats4    stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods
    ## [8] base
    ##
    ## other attached packages:
    ##  [1] airway_1.31.0                   tidySummarizedExperiment_1.22.0
    ##  [3] tidybulk_2.2.0                  ttservice_0.5.3
    ##  [5] SummarizedExperiment_1.42.0     Biobase_2.72.0
    ##  [7] GenomicRanges_1.64.0            Seqinfo_1.2.0
    ##  [9] IRanges_2.46.0                  S4Vectors_0.50.0
    ## [11] BiocGenerics_0.58.0             generics_0.1.4
    ## [13] MatrixGenerics_1.24.0           matrixStats_1.5.0
    ## [15] ggrepel_0.9.8                   ggplot2_4.0.3
    ## [17] forcats_1.0.1                   magrittr_2.0.5
    ## [19] purrr_1.2.2                     tibble_3.3.1
    ## [21] tidyr_1.3.2                     dplyr_1.2.1
    ## [23] knitr_1.51                      BiocStyle_2.40.0
    ##
    ## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
    ##  [1] DBI_1.3.0            rlang_1.2.0          otel_0.2.0
    ##  [4] compiler_4.6.0       RSQLite_2.4.6        mgcv_1.9-4
    ##  [7] png_0.1-9            vctrs_0.7.3          sva_3.60.0
    ## [10] stringr_1.6.0        pkgconfig_2.0.3      crayon_1.5.3
    ## [13] fastmap_1.2.0        magick_2.9.1         XVector_0.52.0
    ## [16] ellipsis_0.3.3       labeling_0.4.3       utf8_1.2.6
    ## [19] rmarkdown_2.31       tinytex_0.59         bit_4.6.0
    ## [22] xfun_0.57            cachem_1.1.0         jsonlite_2.0.0
    ## [25] blob_1.3.0           DelayedArray_0.38.0  BiocParallel_1.46.0
    ## [28] parallel_4.6.0       R6_2.6.1             bslib_0.10.0
    ## [31] stringi_1.8.7        RColorBrewer_1.1-3   limma_3.68.0
    ## [34] genefilter_1.94.0    jquerylib_0.1.4      Rcpp_1.1.1-1.1
    ## [37] bookdown_0.46        splines_4.6.0        Matrix_1.7-5
    ## [40] tidyselect_1.2.1     dichromat_2.0-0.1    abind_1.4-8
    ## [43] yaml_2.3.12          codetools_0.2-20     lattice_0.22-9
    ## [46] withr_3.0.2          KEGGREST_1.52.0      S7_0.2.2
    ## [49] evaluate_1.0.5       survival_3.8-6       Biostrings_2.80.0
    ## [52] pillar_1.11.1        BiocManager_1.30.27  plotly_4.12.0
    ## [55] scales_1.4.0         xtable_1.8-8         glue_1.8.1
    ## [58] lazyeval_0.2.3       tools_4.6.0          data.table_1.18.2.1
    ## [61] annotate_1.90.0      locfit_1.5-9.12      XML_3.99-0.23
    ## [64] grid_4.6.0           AnnotationDbi_1.74.0 edgeR_4.10.0
    ## [67] nlme_3.1-169         cli_3.6.6            S4Arrays_1.12.0
    ## [70] viridisLite_0.4.3    gtable_0.3.6         sass_0.4.10
    ## [73] digest_0.6.39        SparseArray_1.12.0   htmlwidgets_1.6.4
    ## [76] farver_2.1.2         memoise_2.0.1        htmltools_0.5.9
    ## [79] lifecycle_1.0.5      httr_1.4.8           statmod_1.5.1
    ## [82] bit64_4.8.0