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Understanding and making the most of complex data collected from multiple sources is a challenging task. Data integration is the procedure of describing the main features in multiple data blocks, and several methods for multiblock analysis have been previously developed, including OnPLS and JIVE. One of the main challenges is how to visualize and interpret the results of multiblock analyses because of the increased model complexity and sheer size of data. In this paper, we present novel visualization tools that simplify interpretation and overview of multiblock analysis. We introduce a correlation matrix plot that provides an overview of the relationships between blocks found by multiblock models. We also present a multiblock scatter plot, a metadata correlation plot, and a variation distribution plot, that simplify the interpretation of multiblock models. We demonstrate our visualizations on an industrial case study in vibration spectroscopy (NIR, UV, and Raman datasets) as well as a multiomics integration study (transcript, metabolite, and protein datasets). We conclude that our visualizations provide useful tools to harness the complexity of multiblock analysis and enable better understanding of the investigated system.

In the present paper, we introduce an end-to-end workflow called joint and unique multiblock analysis (JUMBA), which allows multiple sources of data to be analyzed simultaneously to better understand how they complement each other. In near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, calibration models between NIR spectra and responses are used to replace wet-chemistry methods, and the models tend to be instrument-specific. Calibration-transfer techniques are used for standardization of NIR-instrumentation, enabling the use of one model on several instruments. The current paper investigates both the similarities and differences among a variety of NIR instruments using JUMBA. We demonstrate JUMBA on both a previously unpublished data set in which five NIR instruments measured mushroom substrate and a publicly available data set measured on corn samples. We found that NIR spectra from different instrumentation largely shared the same underlying structures, an insight we took advantage of to perform calibration transfer. The proposed JUMBA transfer displayed excellent calibration-transfer performance across the two analyzed data sets and outperformed existing methods in terms of both prediction accuracy and stability. When applied to a multi-instrument environment, JUMBA transfer can integrate all instruments in the same model and will ensure higher consistency among them compared with existing calibration-transfer methods.

Modern profiling technologies enable obtaining large amounts of data which can be later used for comprehensive understanding of the studied system. Proper evaluation of such data is challenging, and cannot be faced by bare analysis of separate datasets. Integrated approaches are necessary, because only data integration allows finding correlation trends common for all studied data sets and revealing hidden structures not known a priori. This improves understanding and interpretation of the complex systems. Joint and Unique MultiBlock Analysis (JUMBA) is an analysis method based on the OnPLS-algorithm that decomposes a set of matrices into joint parts containing variation shared with other connected matrices and variation that is unique for each single matrix. Mapping unique variation is important from a data integration perspective, since it certainly cannot be expected that all variation co-varies. In this work we used JUMBA for integrated analysis of lipidomic, metabolomic and oxylipin datasets obtained from profiling of plasma samples from children infected with P. falciparum malaria. P. falciparum is one of the primary contributors to childhood mortality and obstetric complications in the developing world, what makes development of the new diagnostic and prognostic tools, as well as better understanding of the disease, of utmost importance. In presented work JUMBA made it possible to detect already known trends related to disease progression, but also to discover new structures in the data connected to food intake and personal differences in metabolism. By separating the variation in each data set into joint and unique, JUMBA reduced complexity of the analysis, facilitated detection of samples and variables corresponding to specific structures across multiple datasets and by doing this enabled fast interpretation of the studied system. All this makes JUMBA a perfect choice for multiblock analysis of systems biology data.