Run subset clustering on a Seurat object

It's unlike Seurat::FindSubCluster, which only finds subclusters of a single cluster. Instead, it will perform the whole clustering procedure on the subset of cells. One can use metadata to specify the subset of cells to perform clustering on.

Usage

RunSeuratSubClustering(
  object,
  subset,
  name = "subcluster",
  RunPCAArgs = list(),
  RunUMAPArgs = list(),
  FindNeighborsArgs = list(),
  FindClustersArgs = list(),
  log = NULL,
  cache = NULL
)

Arguments

object

Seurat object

subset

A string of expression to pass to dplyr::filter function to filter the cells.

name

Name of the run. It will be used as the prefix for the reduction name, keys and cluster names. For reduction keys, it will be toupper(<name>) + "PC_" and toupper(<name>) + "UMAP_". For cluster names, it will be <name> + "." + resolution. And the final cluster name will be <name>. Default is "subcluster".

RunPCAArgs

Arguments to pass to Seurat::RunPCA()

RunUMAPArgs

Arguments to pass to Seurat::RunUMAP(). RunUMAPArgs$features can be a character vector of features directly used for UMAP, or a list with the following fields:

• order: The order of the markers to use for UMAP, e.g. "desc(abs(avg_log2FC))"

• n: The number of total features to use for UMAP, e.g. 30 If RunUMAPArgs$features is a list, it will run RunSeuratDEAnalysis() to get the markers for each group, and then select the top n/ngroups features for each group based on the order field.

FindNeighborsArgs

Arguments to pass to Seurat::FindNeighbors()

FindClustersArgs

Arguments to pass to Seurat::FindClusters()

log

Logger

cache

Directory to cache the results. Set to FALSE to disable caching

Value

The original Seurat object (not the subsetted one) with the subclusters results in @meta.data and @reductions.

Examples

# \donttest{
obj <- SeuratObject::pbmc_small
# Just run UMAP to compare with the subclusters
obj <- suppressMessages(Seurat::RunUMAP(obj, dims = 1:10))
obj <- suppressWarnings(suppressMessages(RunSeuratSubClustering(
   obj, subset = "groups == 'g1'", name = "g1subcluster"
)))
#> INFO    [2025-12-05 16:28:11] Subsetting seurat object ...
#> INFO    [2025-12-05 16:28:11] - Running RunPCA ...
#> INFO    [2025-12-05 16:28:12] - Running FindNeighbors ...
#> INFO    [2025-12-05 16:28:13] - Running FindClusters ...
#> INFO    [2025-12-05 16:28:13]   Using resolution(s): 0.8
#> Modularity Optimizer version 1.3.0 by Ludo Waltman and Nees Jan van Eck
#> 
#> Number of nodes: 44
#> Number of edges: 946
#> 
#> Running Louvain algorithm...
#> Maximum modularity in 10 random starts: 0.2121
#> Number of communities: 2
#> Elapsed time: 0 seconds
#> INFO    [2025-12-05 16:28:14]   Found subclusters (with resolution 0.8):
#> INFO    [2025-12-05 16:28:14]    | s1(25), s2(19)
#> INFO    [2025-12-05 16:28:14] - Running RunUMAP ...

scplotter::CellDimPlot(
    obj, reduction = "umap", group_by = "groups",
    title = "UMAP of all cells",
    subtitle = "groups = g1 will be subclustered"
)

scplotter::CellDimPlot(
    obj, reduction = "umap", group_by = "g1subcluster",
    title = "Subclusters on the original UMAP"
)

scplotter::CellDimPlot(obj,
    reduction = "g1subcluster.umap", group_by = "g1subcluster"
)

# }