Cited by 33Gene expression and cancer classificationSingle-cell and spatial transcriptomicsBioinformatics and Genomic Networks

reComBat: batch-effect removal in large-scale multi-source gene-expression data integration

Open access
Adamer, Michael F, Brüningk, Sarah C, Tejada-Arranz, Alejandro, Estermann, Fabienne, Basler, Marek, Borgwardt, Karsten·2022·Bioinformatics Advances

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

Motivation: With the steadily increasing abundance of omics data produced all over the world under vastly different experimental conditions residing in public databases, a crucial step in many data-driven bioinformatics applications is that of data integration. The challenge of batch-effect removal for entire databases lies in the large number of batches and biological variation, which can result in design matrix singularity. This problem can currently not be solved satisfactorily by any common batch-correction algorithm. Results: We present reComBat, a regularized version of the empirical Bayes method to overcome this limitation and benchmark it against popular approaches for the harmonization of public gene-expression data (both microarray and bulkRNAsq) of the human opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Batch-effects are successfully mitigated while biologically meaningful gene-expression variation is retained. reComBat fills the gap in batch-correction approaches applicable to large-scale, public omics databases and opens up new avenues for data-driven analysis of complex biological processes beyond the scope of a single study. Availability and implementation: The code is available at https://github.com/BorgwardtLab/reComBat, all data and evaluation code can be found at https://github.com/BorgwardtLab/batchCorrectionPublicData. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics Advances online.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/bioadv/vbac071

Cites

53 of 53 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Adamer, M. F., Brüningk, S. C., Tejada-Arranz, A., Estermann, F., Basler, M., & Borgwardt, K.
Affiliations
  • SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (CH)
  • University of Basel (CH)
Corresponding author
Adamer, Michael F
Venue
Bioinformatics Advances
Published
2022-01-01
Volume
2
Issue
1
Pages
vbac071-vbac071
ISSN
2635-0041 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4297986620
Cited by
27
References
53
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 3
FWCI
2.20
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Bioinformatics Advances (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nd)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • edoc (University of Basel) (acceptedVersion)
  • Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nd)
  • ETH Zürich Research Collection
Funders
Swiss National Science Foundation (51NF40_180541)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Gene expression and cancer classification
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Bioinformatics and Genomic Networks
Keywords
batch effect correction, multi-source data fusion, gene expression data, empirical Bayes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, microarray data, bulk RNA-seq

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review