readTargets {limma}R Documentation

Read RNA Targets File

Description

Read targets file for a two-color microarray experiment into a dataframe.

Usage

readTargets(file="Targets.txt", path=NULL, sep="\t", row.names="FileName")

Arguments

file character string giving the name of the targets file.
path character string giving the directory containing the file. Can be omitted if the file is in the current working irectory.
sep field separator character
row.names character string giving name of column from which to obtain row names

Details

The targets file is a text file containing information about the RNA samples used as targets in the microarray experiment. The files should have a row of column headers and shoule have one row for each array in the experiment. Normally there are columns labelled Cy3 and Cy5 or similar specifying which RNA samples are hybridized to each channel of each array. Other columns may contain any other information associated with the arrays or targets used in the experiment. If there is a column named FileName then that will be used to construct row names for the dataframe.

See the Limma User's Guide for examples of this function.

Value

Data frame usually including columns

Cy3 character vector giving names of RNA samples
Cy5 character vector giving names of RNA samples

Character columns are not converted into factors.

Author(s)

Gordon Smyth

See Also

An overview of LIMMA functions for reading data is given in 3.ReadingData.


[Package limma version 1.8.6 Index]