# HPAanalyze <img src="vignettes/figures/hex.png" align="right" height="200px"/>
In Bioconductor:
- **Background:** The Human Protein Atlas program aims to map human
proteins via multiple technologies including imaging, proteomics and
transcriptomics.
- **Results:** `HPAanalyze` is an R package for retreiving and
performing exploratory data analysis from HPA. It provides
functionality for importing data tables and xml files from HPA,
exporting and visualizing data, as well as download all staining
images of interest. The package is free, open source, and available
via Github.
- **Conclusions:** `HPAanalyze` intergrates into the R workflow via
the `tidyverse` philosophy and data structures, and can be used in
combination with Bioconductor packages for easy analysis of HPA
data.
- **Citation:** Tran, A.N., Dussaq, A.M., Kennell, T. et
al. HPAanalyze: an R package that facilitates the retrieval and
analysis of the Human Protein Atlas data. BMC Bioinformatics 20,
463 (2019) <https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-019-3059-z>
## Background
The Human Protein Atlas (HPA) is a comprehensive resource for
exploration of human proteome which contains a vast amount of proteomics
and transcriptomics data generated from antibody-based tissue
micro-array profiling and RNA deep-sequencing.
The program has generated protein expression profiles in human normal
tissues with cell type-specific expression patterns, cancer and cell
lines via an innovative immunohistochemistry-based approach. These
profiles are accompanied by a large collection of high quality
histological staining images, annotated with clinical data and
quantification. The database also includes classification of protein
into both functional classes (such as transcription factors or kinases)
and project-related classes (such as candidate genes for cancer).
Starting from version 4.0, the HPA includes subcellular location
profiles generated based on confocal images of immunofluorescent stained
cells. Together, these data provide a detailed picture of protein
expression in human cells and tissues, facilitating tissue-based
diagnostis and research.
Data from the HPA are freely available via proteinatlas.org, allowing
scientists to access and incorporate the data into their research. Here,
we introduce *HPAanalyze*, an R package aims to simplify exploratory
data analysis from those data.
## Overview
*HPAanalyze* is designed to fullfill 3 main tasks: (1) Import,
subsetting and export downloadable datasets; (2) Visualization of
downloadable datasets for exploratory analysis; and (3) Working with the
individual XML files. This package aims to serve researchers with little
programming experience, but also allow power users to use the imported
data as desired.
### Obtaining *HPAanalyze*
The stable version of *HPAanalyze* should be downloaded from
Bioconductor:
``` r
if (!requireNamespace("BiocManager", quietly = TRUE))
install.packages("BiocManager")
BiocManager::install("HPAanalyze")
```
The development version of *HPAanalyze* is available on Github can be
installed with:
``` r
devtools::install_github("anhtr/HPAanalyze")
```
### Full dataset import, subsetting and export
The `hpaDownload()` function downloads full datasets from HPA and
imports them into R as a list of tibbles, the standard object of
*tidyverse*, which can subsequently be subset with `hpaSubset()` and
export into .xmlx files with `hpaExport()`. The standard object allow
the imported data to be further processed in a traditional R workflow.
The ability to quickly subset and export data gives researchers the
option to use other non-R downstream tools, such as GraphPad for
creating publication-quality graphics, or share a subset of data
containing only proteins of interest.
### Visualization
The `hpaVis` function family take the output of `hpaDownload()` (or
`hpaSubset()`) provides quick visualization of the data, with the
intention of aiding exploratory analysis. Nevertheless, the standard
`ggplot` object output of these functions give users the option to
further customize the plots for publication. All `hpaVis` functions
share the same syntax for arguments: subsetting, specifying colors and
opting to use custom themes.
The first release of the *HPAanalyze* package includes three functions:
`hpaVisTissue()` for the *normal tissue*, `hpaVisPatho()` for the
*pathology/cancer*, and `hpaVisSubcell()` for the *subcellular location*
datasets.
### Individual xml import and image downloading
The `hpaXml` function family import and extract data from individual XML
entries from HPA. The `hpaXmlGet()` function downloads and imports data
as “xml_document”/“xml_node” object, which can subsequently be processed
by other `hpaXml` functions. The XML format from HPA contains a wealth
of information that may not be covered by this package. However, users
can extract any data of interest from the imported XML file using the
xml2 package.
In the first release, *HPAanalyze* includes four functions for data
extraction from HPA XML files: `hpaXmlProtClass()` for protein class
information, `hpaTissueExprSum()` for summary of protein expression in
tissue, `hpaXmlAntibody()` for a list of antibody used to stain for the
protein of interest, and `hpaTissueExpr()` for a detailed data from each
sample including clinical data and IHC scoring.
`hpaTissueExprSum` and `hpaTissueExpr` provide download links to
download relevant staining images, with the former function also gives
the options to automate the downloading process.
# Availability and requirements
- Project name: HPAanalyze
- Project home page: <https://github.com/anhtr/HPAanalyze>
- Operating system(s): All platforms where R is available, including
Windows, Linux, OS X
- Other requirements: R 3.5.0 or higher, and the R packages dplyr,
openxlsx, ggplot2, tibble, xml2, stats, utils, gridExtra
- License: GPL-3
# Acknowledgements
We appreciate the support of the National institutes of Health National
Cancer Institute R01 CA151522 and funds from the Department of Cell,
Developmental and Integrative Biology at the University of Alabama at
Birmingham.
# Copyright
**Anh Tran, 2018-2023**
Please cite: **Tran, A.N., Dussaq, A.M., Kennell, T. et al. HPAanalyze:
an R package that facilitates the retrieval and analysis of the Human
Protein Atlas data. BMC Bioinformatics 20, 463 (2019)
<https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-019-3059-z>**
