revealing clusters of interaction in igraph - r

Question

I have an interaction network and I used the following code to make an adjacency matrix and subsequently calculate the dissimilarity between the nodes of the network and then cluster them to form modules:
ADJ1=abs(adjacent-mat)^6
dissADJ1<-1-ADJ1
hierADJ<-hclust(as.dist(dissADJ1), method = "average")
Now I would like those modules to appear when I plot the igraph.
g<-simplify(graph_from_adjacency_matrix(adjacent-mat, weighted=T))
plot.igraph(g)
However the only thing that I have found thus far to translate hclust output to graph is as per the following tutorial: http://gastonsanchez.com/resources/2014/07/05/Pretty-tree-graph/
phylo_tree = as.phylo(hierADJ)
graph_edges = phylo_tree$edge
graph_net = graph.edgelist(graph_edges)
plot(graph_net)
which is useful for hierarchical lineage but rather I just want the nodes that closely interact to cluster as follows:
Can anyone recommend how to use a command such as components from igraph to get these clusters to show?

Answer 1

igraph provides a bunch of different layout algorithms which are used to place nodes in the plot.
A good one to start with for a weighted network like this is the force-directed layout (implemented by layout.fruchterman.reingold in igraph).
Below is a example of using the force-directed layout using some simple simulated data.
First, we create some mock data and clusters, along with some "noise" to make it more realistic:
library('dplyr')
library('igraph')
library('RColorBrewer')
set.seed(1)
# generate a couple clusters
nodes_per_cluster <- 30
n <- 10
nvals <- nodes_per_cluster * n
# cluster 1 (increasing)
cluster1 <- matrix(rep((1:n)/4, nodes_per_cluster) +
rnorm(nvals, sd=1),
nrow=nodes_per_cluster, byrow=TRUE)
# cluster 2 (decreasing)
cluster2 <- matrix(rep((n:1)/4, nodes_per_cluster) +
rnorm(nvals, sd=1),
nrow=nodes_per_cluster, byrow=TRUE)
# noise cluster
noise <- matrix(sample(1:2, nvals, replace=TRUE) +
rnorm(nvals, sd=1.5),
nrow=nodes_per_cluster, byrow=TRUE)
dat <- rbind(cluster1, cluster2, noise)
colnames(dat) <- paste0('n', 1:n)
rownames(dat) <- c(paste0('cluster1_', 1:nodes_per_cluster),
paste0('cluster2_', 1:nodes_per_cluster),
paste0('noise_', 1:nodes_per_cluster))
Next, we can use Pearson correlation to construct our adjacency matrix:
# create correlation matrix
cor_mat <- cor(t(dat))
# shift to [0,1] to separate positive and negative correlations
adj_mat <- (cor_mat + 1) / 2
# get rid of low correlations and self-loops
adj_mat <- adj_mat^3
adj_mat[adj_mat < 0.5] <- 0
diag(adj_mat) <- 0
Cluster the data using hclust and cutree:
# convert to dissimilarity matrix and cluster using hclust
dissim_mat <- 1 - adj_mat
dend <- dissim_mat %>%
as.dist %>%
hclust
clusters = cutree(dend, h=0.65)
# color the nodes
pal = colorRampPalette(brewer.pal(11,"Spectral"))(length(unique(clusters)))
node_colors <- pal[clusters]
Finally, create an igraph graph from the adjacency matrix and plot it using the fruchterman.reingold layout:
# create graph
g <- graph.adjacency(adj_mat, mode='undirected', weighted=TRUE)
# set node color and plot using a force-directed layout (fruchterman-reingold)
V(g)$color <- node_colors
coords_fr = layout.fruchterman.reingold(g, weights=E(g)$weight)
# igraph plot options
igraph.options(vertex.size=8, edge.width=0.75)
# plot network
plot(g, layout=coords_fr, vertex.color=V(g)$color)
In the above code, I generated two "clusters" of correlated rows, and a third group of "noise".
Hierarchical clustering (hclust + cuttree) is used to assign the data points to clusters, and they are colored based on cluster membership.
The result looks like this:
For some more examples of clustering and plotting graphs with igraph, checkout: http://michael.hahsler.net/SMU/LearnROnYourOwn/code/igraph.html

Answer 2

You haven't shared some toy data for us to play with and suggest improvements to code, but your question states that you are only interested in plotting your clusters distinctly - that is, graphical presentation.
Although igraph comes with some nice force directed layout algorithms, such as layout.fruchterman.reingold, layout_with_kk, etc., they can, in presence of a large number of nodes, quickly become difficult to interpret and make sense of at all.
Like this:
With these traditional methods of visualising networks,
the layout algorithms, rather than the data, determine the visualisation
similar networks may end up being visualised very differently
large number of nodes will make the visualisation difficult to interpret
Instead, I find Hive Plots to be better at displaying important network properties, which, in your instance, are the cluster and the edges.
In your case, you can:
Plot each cluster on a different straight line
order the placement of nodes intelligently, so that nodes with certain properties are placed at the very end or start of each straight line
Colour the edges to identify direction of edge
To achieve this you will need to:
use the ggnetwork package to turn your igraph object into a dataframe
map your clusters to the nodes present in this dataframe
generate coordinates for the straight lines and map these to each cluster
use ggplot to visualise
There is also a hiveR package in R, should you wish to use a packaged solution. You might also find another visualisation technique for graphs very useful: BioFabric