9. Scaling up, and correcting across laboratories#

At screen scale, data often no longer fits in memory and comes from more than one laboratory. This page covers both, using JUMP-Target-2, the plate the JUMP consortium [Chandrasekaran et al., 2023] ran at every participating laboratory, so any difference between two copies of it is technical.

A note on terms. JUMP calls a participating laboratory a source, and this page uses that column throughout: Metadata_Source, with values from source_2 to source_13. In a CellProfiler export, Metadata_Site is a field of view inside a well (four or nine per well), which this page does not use. When this page says “site”, it means the laboratory.

The correction results at the end differ from what the batch metrics predict.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import scanpy as sc

import mantispy as mt

Working from disk#

mt.io.read(path, backed="r") leaves X in the file. obs and var are loaded into memory, so metadata, QC flags and feature selection work as before, and grouped operations read one group at a time.

On 100 000 cells by 500 features, a per-plate median takes 3.5 s and 44 MB backed, against 0.8 s and a 200 MB resident matrix in memory: four times the runtime for four and a half times less memory. Use it only on data that does not fit in memory.

plate = mt.ds.synthetic_plate(n_plates=4, n_wells=96, n_cells=40, n_features=40, seed=0)
mt.io.write(plate, "scaling_demo.h5ad")

backed = mt.io.read("scaling_demo.h5ad", backed="r")
in_memory = mt.io.read("scaling_demo.h5ad")

{
    "backed": (backed.isbacked, type(backed.X).__name__),
    "in memory": (in_memory.isbacked, type(in_memory.X).__name__),
    "obs is in memory either way": type(backed.obs).__name__,
}
{'backed': (True, 'Dataset'),
 'in memory': (False, 'ndarray'),
 'obs is in memory either way': 'DataFrame'}
from_disk = mt.pp.normalize(backed, by="Metadata_Plate", reference="negcon", copy=True)
resident = mt.pp.normalize(in_memory, by="Metadata_Plate", reference="negcon", copy=True)

{
    "identical": bool(np.allclose(np.asarray(from_disk.X), np.asarray(resident.X), rtol=1e-6)),
    "largest difference": float(np.abs(np.asarray(from_disk.X) - np.asarray(resident.X)).max()),
}
{'identical': True, 'largest difference': 0.0}

The results are identical. The backed path reduces group by group while the in-memory path makes one kernel call, and the test suite asserts they agree to 1e-10.

Functions that rewrite X need copy=True here. The file is open read-only, so they raise a clear error instead of failing inside h5py:

try:
    mt.pp.normalize(backed, by="Metadata_Plate")
except ValueError as error:
    print(error)
normalize rewrites X, which a backed object holds read-only on disk. Pass copy=True to get the result in memory, or call adata.to_memory() first.

JUMP-Target-2#

mt.ds.jump_target2() downloads one TARGET2 plate from each of the eleven sources that ran it, and joins the JUMP annotation onto them. The plate map is identical at every source, and source_9 runs it four times over on a 1536-well plate; only the laboratory differs.

jump = mt.ds.jump_target2()
{
    "shape": jump.shape,
    "sources": jump.obs["Metadata_Source"].value_counts().to_dict(),
    "perturbations": int(jump.obs["Metadata_Perturbation"].nunique()),
    "control wells": int(jump.obs["Metadata_Control"].sum()),
}
{'shape': (5374, 3634),
 'sources': {'source_9': 1536,
  'source_10': 384,
  'source_13': 384,
  'source_3': 384,
  'source_4': 384,
  'source_5': 384,
  'source_6': 384,
  'source_7': 384,
  'source_8': 384,
  'source_11': 383,
  'source_2': 383},
 'perturbations': 302,
 'control wells': 898}

A JUMP plate parquet has three metadata columns (source, plate and well) and no information about what each well contained. mt.pp.annotate_jump, which read_jump calls, joins the perturbation identity from the JUMP metadata repository.

The same pipeline#

The recipe does not change for data from eleven sites, including the degenerate_scale drop from tutorial 6. That drop matters most here: 111 of JUMP’s features have no spread among the control wells of some plate, and mad_robustize would return each of them at around 1e17.

mt.pp.normalize(jump, method="mad_robustize", by="Metadata_Plate", reference="negcon")
degenerate = int(jump.var["degenerate_scale"].sum())
jump = jump[:, ~jump.var["degenerate_scale"].to_numpy()].copy()
mt.pp.feature_select(jump, na_cutoff=0.0)
jump = mt.pp.subset_features(jump)

{
    "features with no spread among the controls": degenerate,
    "features kept": jump.n_vars,
    "control wells per source": jump.obs.groupby("Metadata_Source", observed=True)["Metadata_Control"].sum().to_dict(),
}
{'features with no spread among the controls': 111,
 'features kept': 608,
 'control wells per source': {'source_10': 64,
  'source_11': 64,
  'source_13': 64,
  'source_2': 65,
  'source_3': 64,
  'source_4': 64,
  'source_5': 64,
  'source_6': 65,
  'source_7': 64,
  'source_8': 64,
  'source_9': 256}}

How big is the site effect?#

mt.metrics.evaluate_correction runs the batch metrics and says which direction is better for each.

sc.pp.pca(jump, n_comps=30)
mt.metrics.evaluate_correction(jump, label_key="Metadata_Perturbation", batch_key="Metadata_Source").round(3)
metric representation key value better
0 silhouette_label X_pca Metadata_Perturbation 0.321 higher
1 silhouette_batch X_pca Metadata_Source 0.863 higher
2 ilisi X_pca Metadata_Source 2.773 higher
3 clisi X_pca Metadata_Perturbation 8.928 lower
4 pc_regression X_pca Metadata_Source 0.010 lower
ax = mt.pl.batch_variance(jump, keys=["Metadata_Source", "Metadata_Perturbation"])
plt.show()
../_images/5cd5dc79c500ef324a319756cc0df85d3139975dac51fa7c9b22c2e0e99025b3.png

Cross-source retrieval#

Batch metrics ask whether the sites mix. A screen needs to know whether the same compound, run at different sites, produces the same profile. That is a retrieval task, with pos_sameby set to the perturbation and pos_diffby to the source.

The next cell computes the baseline and four corrections.

def cross_source_map(adata, use_rep=None):
    """Mean average precision for retrieving a compound across sites."""
    treated = adata[~adata.obs["Metadata_Control"].to_numpy()].copy()
    mt.tl.map(
        treated,
        pos_sameby=["Metadata_Perturbation"],
        pos_diffby=["Metadata_Source"],
        neg_diffby=["Metadata_Perturbation"],
        use_rep=use_rep,
        null_size=500,
        seed=0,
    )
    table = treated.uns["mantispy"]["map"]
    return round(float(table["mean_average_precision"].mean()), 3), int(table["below_corrected_p"].sum())


n_treated = int(jump.obs.loc[~jump.obs["Metadata_Control"].to_numpy(), "Metadata_Perturbation"].nunique())
variants = {"per-plate normalize only": jump}

per_source = jump.copy()
mt.pp.sphere(per_source, method="ZCA-cor", reference="negcon", by="Metadata_Source")
variants["+ sphere per source"] = per_source

pooled = jump.copy()
mt.pp.sphere(pooled, method="ZCA-cor", reference="negcon")
variants["+ sphere pooled controls"] = pooled

regressed = jump.copy()
mt.pp.regress_out(regressed, keys=["Metadata_Source"], by=None)
variants["+ regress out source"] = regressed

reproducible = jump.copy()
mt.pp.feature_reproducibility(reproducible, groupby="Metadata_Perturbation", min_icc=0.2)
reproducible = reproducible[:, reproducible.var["icc_selected"].to_numpy()].copy()
variants["+ keep ICC > 0.2"] = reproducible

pd.DataFrame(
    [
        {"pipeline": name, "features": adata.n_vars, "cross-source mAP": score, f"significant of {n_treated}": count}
        for name, adata in variants.items()
        for score, count in [cross_source_map(adata)]
    ]
)
pipeline features cross-source mAP significant of 301
0 per-plate normalize only 608 0.021 79
1 + sphere per source 608 0.021 119
2 + sphere pooled controls 608 0.008 0
3 + regress out source 608 0.004 0
4 + keep ICC > 0.2 254 0.028 123
# The batch metrics again, after sphering per source.
sphered = variants["+ sphere per source"].copy()
sc.pp.pca(sphered, n_comps=30)
mt.metrics.evaluate_correction(
    sphered, reps=("X_pca",), label_key="Metadata_Perturbation", batch_key="Metadata_Source"
).round(3)
metric representation key value better
0 silhouette_label X_pca Metadata_Perturbation 0.386 higher
1 silhouette_batch X_pca Metadata_Source 0.895 higher
2 ilisi X_pca Metadata_Source 5.164 higher
3 clisi X_pca Metadata_Perturbation 4.823 lower
4 pc_regression X_pca Metadata_Source 0.013 lower

Compare that table with the metrics above.

Sphering per source improves every batch metric except the variance explained by source, and here retrieval agrees: the mAP holds, and 119 compounds are recovered above chance instead of 79. Sphering on the pooled controls and regressing out the source recover none. Keeping the features whose replicates agree, which is not a batch correction, recovers the most.

Judge a correction by the retrieval the screen needs. The mixing metrics describe the batches, not whether the biology survived.

With one plate per site, there are 64 control wells per site (256 at source_9) against 608 features, so every covariance-based correction here is underdetermined. With twenty plates per site the result could differ.

What the consortium’s recipe does#

JUMP has three recipes, and the perturbation type decides which one applies. jump-profiling-recipe names them in its configs. For compounds, which TARGET-2 contains, compound.json specifies

profiles_var_mad_int_featselect_harmony

that is, variance-based feature selection, MAD normalization against the negative controls, the rank inverse normal transform, feature selection and Harmony. The ORF and CRISPR branches use a different pipeline, profiles_wellpos_cc_var_mad_outlier_featselect_sphering_harmony, which adds well position correction, cell count regression, outlier removal and sphering.

Sphering is not in the compound pipeline. The two steps of the compound pipeline that the comparison above does not include are covered below, and both behave differently from the corrections in that table.

pp.rank_int is the rank inverse normal transform. Each feature’s values are replaced by their normal scores within a plate, so only the ordering of the wells is kept and the scale is discarded. Every feature ends up standard normal by construction, which is a strong assumption about your data, so check what it costs.

inted = jump.copy()
mt.pp.rank_int(inted, by="Metadata_Plate")

# The reference implementation ranks each feature over the whole screen; ranking within a
# plate additionally removes any plate-level difference in the shape of the distribution.
globally = jump.copy()
mt.pp.rank_int(globally)

inted_icc = inted.copy()
mt.pp.feature_reproducibility(inted_icc, groupby="Metadata_Perturbation", min_icc=0.2)
inted_icc = inted_icc[:, inted_icc.var["icc_selected"].to_numpy()].copy()

pd.DataFrame(
    [
        {"pipeline": name, "features": adata.n_vars, "cross-source mAP": score, f"significant of {n_treated}": count}
        for name, adata in [
            ("per-plate normalize only", jump),
            ("+ rank INT, ranked globally", globally),
            ("+ rank INT, ranked per plate", inted),
            ("+ rank INT per plate, then ICC > 0.2", inted_icc),
        ]
        for score, count in [cross_source_map(adata)]
    ]
)
pipeline features cross-source mAP significant of 301
0 per-plate normalize only 608 0.021 79
1 + rank INT, ranked globally 608 0.023 114
2 + rank INT, ranked per plate 608 0.033 126
3 + rank INT per plate, then ICC > 0.2 62 0.034 153

Ranking helps more than any correction above, and the ICC filter adds to it on only 62 features.

Where you rank matters. The reference implementation ranks each feature over the whole screen, which is the by=None default. Ranking within each plate works markedly better here, because it also removes plate-to-plate differences in the shape of a feature’s distribution, which with one plate per site are the differences between sites.

Where INT sits in the pipeline matters much less. The recipe applies it before feature selection, and this notebook applies it after. The other order (measured separately, not in the table above) gives 0.032 with 126 compounds above chance, against 0.033 and 126 in the table, on 794 features instead of 608. The feature count differs because INT makes every feature standard normal, so a variance threshold has nothing left to discriminate on and drops far fewer features.

The transform discards magnitude, and distance from the controls depends on magnitude, so check the effect on activity as well:

def activity(adata):
    """Phenotypic activity: can each compound be told from the negative controls?"""
    scratch = adata.copy()
    mt.tl.map(scratch, mode="activity", null_size=500, seed=0)
    table = scratch.uns["mantispy"]["map"]
    return round(float(table["mean_average_precision"].mean()), 3), int(table["below_corrected_p"].sum())


{"per-plate normalize only": activity(jump), "+ rank INT": activity(inted)}
{'per-plate normalize only': (0.106, 113), '+ rank INT': (0.124, 115)}

Here it costs nothing, and activity rises too. That does not generalize: this is one plate per source and 608 features. On the full 132-plate set, where there are enough controls for the raw magnitudes to be meaningful, the transform lowers activity in exchange for comparability. The outcome depends on the screen, so measure both before adopting it.

Harmony, and a metric that disagrees with retrieval#

pp.harmony ranked in the top three in every scenario of the batch-correction benchmark [Arevalo et al., 2024], as did Seurat RPCA, and is the last step of the recipe. It works on an embedding rather than on features (it alternates soft clustering and per-cluster linear correction), so it returns a corrected obsm, not a corrected X.

harmonised = jump.copy()  # carries the X_pca from above
mt.pp.harmony(harmonised, batch_key="Metadata_Source", use_rep="X_pca")

mt.metrics.evaluate_correction(
    harmonised, reps=("X_pca", "X_harmony"), label_key="Metadata_Perturbation", batch_key="Metadata_Source"
).round(3)
metric representation key value better
0 silhouette_label X_pca Metadata_Perturbation 0.321 higher
1 silhouette_batch X_pca Metadata_Source 0.863 higher
2 ilisi X_pca Metadata_Source 2.773 higher
3 clisi X_pca Metadata_Perturbation 8.928 lower
4 pc_regression X_pca Metadata_Source 0.010 lower
5 silhouette_label X_harmony Metadata_Perturbation 0.324 higher
6 silhouette_batch X_harmony Metadata_Source 0.889 higher
7 ilisi X_harmony Metadata_Source 1.228 higher
8 clisi X_harmony Metadata_Perturbation 8.938 lower
9 pc_regression X_harmony Metadata_Source 0.013 lower
def centroid_spread(embedding):
    """Mean distance of the site centroids from their mean."""
    centroids = pd.DataFrame(embedding).groupby(harmonised.obs["Metadata_Source"].to_numpy()).mean()
    return round(float(np.linalg.norm(centroids - centroids.mean(), axis=1).mean()), 1)


{
    key: {
        "site centroid spread": centroid_spread(harmonised.obsm[key]),
        "cross-source mAP": cross_source_map(harmonised, use_rep=key),
    }
    for key in ("X_pca", "X_harmony")
}
{'X_pca': {'site centroid spread': 418.0, 'cross-source mAP': (0.016, 44)},
 'X_harmony': {'site centroid spread': 385.1, 'cross-source mAP': (0.018, 50)}}

Harmony pulls the site centroids 8% closer and raises cross-source retrieval slightly, yet iLISI falls from 2.773 to 1.228.

iLISI asks whether a well’s nearest neighbors come from several sites. Harmony aligns the sites globally without mixing local neighborhoods, so a well stays surrounded by wells from its own site while the site clouds move together. Both observations hold, and retrieval is the one that answers the screen’s question.

harmonypy can report convergence and return the embedding unchanged. pp.harmony compares its output with its input and warns when they are identical, so that uncorrected numbers do not pass unnoticed through the rest of the pipeline.

treated = jump[~jump.obs["Metadata_Control"].to_numpy()].copy()
mt.tl.map(
    treated,
    pos_sameby=["Metadata_Perturbation"],
    pos_diffby=["Metadata_Source"],
    neg_diffby=["Metadata_Perturbation"],
    null_size=500,
    seed=0,
)
sc.pp.pca(treated, n_comps=30)
mt.metrics.evaluate_correction(
    treated, label_key="Metadata_Perturbation", batch_key="Metadata_Source", map_key="map"
).round(3)
metric representation key value better
0 silhouette_label X_pca Metadata_Perturbation 0.328 higher
1 silhouette_batch X_pca Metadata_Source 0.863 higher
2 ilisi X_pca Metadata_Source 2.653 higher
3 clisi X_pca Metadata_Perturbation 12.649 lower
4 pc_regression X_pca Metadata_Source 0.012 lower
5 mean_average_precision X Metadata_Perturbation 0.021 higher

The last table is evaluate_correction with map_key= set, so the retrieval number appears in the same table as the mixing metrics. Its representation reads X, the matrix tl.map scored, not the X_pca of the rows above it. It runs on the treated wells only, which is why cLISI reads 12.6 here against 8.9 in the first table on this page: dropping 898 DMSO wells with the same label makes every neighborhood more label-diverse. Compare rows within a table, not across tables built on different rows.

Which compounds reproduce across sites?#

The results above are aggregates: one mAP for the screen, one LISI per representation. Follow-up work needs to know which compounds reproduced, which the page has not yet shown.

tl.transport answers that. It computes each perturbation’s effect as its profile minus the control centroid of its own setting, so a baseline offset does not count as disagreement, and measures how well those effect vectors agree across settings. by= takes a list from coarsest to finest level, and each pair of plates is assigned to the coarsest level at which the two differ, so every comparison belongs to exactly one level.

With one plate per laboratory, as so far, laboratory and plate effects are the same comparison and cannot be separated. The next cell loads twelve of the 141 plates jump_target2 pins: three sources, two batches each, two plates per batch.

This section uses only the per-plate mad_robustize normalization from earlier, without rank_int, Harmony or the other corrections evaluated above. Its numbers are an uncorrected baseline on a different set of plates and are not comparable with the eleven-plate mAP values earlier on this page.

hierarchy = mt.ds.jump_target2(
    plates=["JCPQC051", "JCPQC052", "JCPQC053", "JCPQC054"]
    + ["BR00121438", "BR00121439", "BR00126113", "BR00126114"]
    + ["110000294936", "110000296682", "110000296339", "110000296356"]
)
mt.pp.normalize(hierarchy, method="mad_robustize", by="Metadata_Plate", reference="negcon")
hierarchy = hierarchy[:, ~hierarchy.var["degenerate_scale"].to_numpy()].copy()
mt.pp.feature_select(hierarchy, na_cutoff=0.0)
hierarchy = mt.pp.subset_features(hierarchy)

mt.tl.transport(hierarchy, by=["Metadata_Source", "Metadata_Batch", "Metadata_Plate"])
by_level = hierarchy.uns["mantispy"]["transport"]
by_level.groupby("level", observed=True).agg(
    compounds=("group", "size"),
    agreement=("agreement", "median"),
    reproduce=("transports", "sum"),
).round(3).reindex(["Metadata_Plate", "Metadata_Batch", "Metadata_Source"])
compounds agreement reproduce
level
Metadata_Plate 301 0.474 75
Metadata_Batch 301 0.363 75
Metadata_Source 301 0.135 61

Read the table row by row. A compound’s effect agrees at +0.474 between two plates of one batch, at +0.363 between batches of one laboratory, and at +0.135 between laboratories. Each step up the hierarchy lowers agreement, and the step between laboratories costs about twice as much as the step between batches.

A single aggregate cross-source mAP shows that the sites disagree, but not whether to fix plate handling or the protocol. The gap between levels does.

The reproduce column counts the compounds whose agreement beats the null at q < 0.05. The null uses every mismatched pair of compounds at that level instead of a sample. A sampled null would not give Benjamini-Hochberg enough resolution: its smallest possible p-value is one over the number of draws, so the count would reflect the number of draws rather than the screen. Standardizing the effect vectors turns the comparison into one matrix product, so the full null takes about a second.

pl.setting_agreement, in the figure below, reads the same effect vectors by plate instead of by compound: it shows which of the twelve plates agree with each other. Annotating by source draws a line at each laboratory boundary, so a laboratory that disagrees with itself appears as a broken block. Its cells are an activity-weighted mean over compounds, while the table’s per-level number is an unweighted median, so the heatmap reads higher than the table for the same pair of settings. Use it to see which settings differ from each other, not to compare absolute levels with the table.

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(6.5, 5))
mt.pl.setting_agreement(hierarchy, by="Metadata_Source", ax=ax)
fig.tight_layout()
plt.show()
../_images/ad219ef13323b9d3885df90c56158b0702daeb9ea967d6e207216caa083bf612.png

Summary#

  • Backed mode saves memory at the cost of speed, and the numbers are identical either way.

  • “Site” is ambiguous in this field. JUMP’s source is a laboratory; CellProfiler’s Metadata_Site is a field of view.

  • A JUMP plate needs its annotation joined before analysis; read_jump does that.

  • Judge a correction by the question your screen asks. On this data the batch metrics and retrieval disagreed about Harmony, and the corrections that pooled the sites removed the biological signal.

  • Reproducibility has levels. tl.transport separates them, and the gap between two levels is more actionable than either value alone. It is an observational measure: it supports “this effect did not reproduce at the other site”, but not “this effect would have been x at the other site”.

Next: 10. Differential features, on which features changed and whether their p-values are reliable.