\name{volcanoPlot} \alias{volcanoPlot} \title{Draw a Volcano Plot} \description{ Generic function to draw a volcano plot. A volcano plot is a graph that allows to simultaneously assess the P values (statistical significance) and log ratios (biological difference) of differential expression for the given genes. } \usage{ volcanoPlot(x, y, pointLabels, ...) } \arguments{ \item{x}{either an object of class 'tTest', of class 'limma' or a numeric vector of log ratios, i.e. the log of the fold change values; the names of the logRatio vector will be used to display the names of the most interesting genes} \item{y}{should not be given if an object of class 'tTest' or 'limma' is passed as argument 'x'; if 'x' is a numeric vector of log ratios, 'y' should be given and should be a numeric vector of P-values indicating the statistical significance} \item{pointLabels}{Labels for points on the volcano plot that are interesting taking into account both the x and y dimensions; typically this is a vector of gene symbols; most methods can access the gene symbols directly from the object passed as 'x' argument; the argument allows for custom labels if needed} \item{\dots}{further arguments to specific methods} } \value{ The volcano plot is drawn to the current device. } \references{Goehlmann, H. and W. Talloen (2009). Gene Expression Studies Using Affymetrix Microarrays, Chapman \& Hall/CRC, pp. 148 - 153. } \author{Tobias Verbeke, based on code by Willem Talloen} \examples{ if (require(ALL)){ data(ALL, package = "ALL") ALL <- addGeneInfo(ALL) ALL$BTtype <- as.factor(substr(ALL$BT,0,1)) tTestRes <- tTest(object = ALL, groups = "BTtype", probe2gene = TRUE) volcanoPlot(tTestRes) } } \keyword{dplot}