graphsim: An R package for simulating gene expression data from graph structures of biological pathways

Peer-reviewed software and manuscript. See the JOSS review issue for details: https://github.com/openjournals/joss-reviews/issues/2161

This package provides functions to develop simulated continuous data (e.g., gene expression) from a sigma covariance matrix derived from a graph structure in 'igraph' objects. Intended to extend 'mvtnorm' to take 'igraph' structures rather than sigma matrices as input. This allows the use of simulated data that correctly accounts for pathway relationships and correlations. Here we present a versatile statistical framework to simulate correlated gene expression data from biological pathways, by sampling from a multivariate normal distribution derived from a graph structure. This package allows the simulation of biological pathways from a graph structure based on a statistical model of gene expression, such as simulation of expression profiles that of log-transformed and normalised data from microarray and RNA-Seq data.