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voomWithDreamWeights() fails with random effects when running documentation example #7

@manishabarse

Description

@manishabarse

Hi,
Thank you for the wonderful package its extensive documentation!

I am trying to reproduce the example from the variancePartition documentation page for voomWithDreamWeights() “Transform RNA-Seq Data Ready for Linear Mixed Modelling with dream()”. Even running the example code exactly as shown results in the following error:
Error in .fitVarPartModel(exprObj, formula, data, REML = REML, useWeights = useWeights, : All models failed. The first model fails with: Error in FUN(...): (converted from warning) partial argument match of 'form' to 'formula'

Code to reproduce:

library(variancePartition)
library(edgeR)
library(BiocParallel)

data(varPartDEdata)

dge <- DGEList(counts = countMatrix)
dge <- calcNormFactors(dge)

# Formula from the vignette
form <- ~ Disease + (1 | Individual)

# Attempt 1: using variable 'form'
vobj <- voomWithDreamWeights(dge[1:20, ], form, metadata)

# Attempt 2: explicit 'formula' argument
vobj <- voomWithDreamWeights(dge[1:20, ], formula = form, data = metadata)

# Attempt 3: force stats::as.formula
vobj <- variancePartition::voomWithDreamWeights(
  dge[1:20, ],
  stats::as.formula(~ Disease + (1 | Individual)),
  metadata
)

All three attempts produce the same error.

Checks and observations

  • metadata contains the required columns:
colnames(metadata)
# [1] "Individual" "Disease" "Experiment" "Sex" "DiseaseSubtype"
  • getOption("warn") returns 0 (default), so global warning settings are not causing the error.

I also tested a formula with only fixed effects:

form <- ~ Disease
vobj <- voomWithDreamWeights(dge[1:20, ], form, metadata, quiet = FALSE)

This runs successfully and returns an object of class EList.

A warning appears:

Warning message:
In fit$coef : partial match of 'coef' to 'coefficients'

It works for fixed effects and the error is triggered when including the random effect.

Session Info

session_info()
─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 setting  value
 version  R version 4.4.3 Patched (2025-02-28 r88218)
 os       Rocky Linux 9.4 (Blue Onyx)
 system   x86_64, linux-gnu
 ui       X11
 language (EN)
 collate  en_US.UTF-8
 ctype    en_US.UTF-8
 tz       US/Eastern
 date     2025-11-12
 quarto   NA

─ Packages ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 package           * version    date (UTC) lib source
 aod                 1.3.3      2023-12-13 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 backports           1.5.0      2024-05-23 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 Biobase             2.66.0     2024-10-29 [2] Bioconductor 3.20 (R 4.4.2)
 BiocGenerics        0.52.0     2024-10-29 [2] Bioconductor 3.20 (R 4.4.2)
 BiocParallel      * 1.40.2     2025-04-10 [2] Bioconductor
 bitops              1.0-9      2024-10-03 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 boot                1.3-31     2024-08-28 [3] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 brio                1.1.5      2024-04-24 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 broom               1.0.8      2025-03-28 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 cachem              1.1.0      2024-05-16 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 caTools             1.18.3     2024-09-04 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 cli                 3.6.5      2025-04-23 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 codetools           0.2-20     2024-03-31 [3] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 colorout          * 1.3-2      2024-12-10 [1] Github (jalvesaq/colorout@2a5f214)
 corpcor             1.6.10     2021-09-16 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 devtools          * 2.4.5      2022-10-11 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 dichromat           2.0-0.1    2022-05-02 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 digest              0.6.37     2024-08-19 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 dplyr               1.1.4      2023-11-17 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 edgeR             * 4.4.2      2025-01-27 [2] Bioconductor 3.20 (R 4.4.2)
 ellipsis            0.3.2      2021-04-29 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
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 farver              2.1.2      2024-05-13 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 fastmap             1.2.0      2024-05-15 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 fs                  1.6.6      2025-04-12 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 generics            0.1.4      2025-05-09 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 ggplot2           * 3.5.2      2025-04-09 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 glue                1.8.0      2024-09-30 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 gplots              3.2.0      2024-10-05 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 gtable              0.3.6      2024-10-25 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 gtools              3.9.5      2023-11-20 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 htmltools           0.5.8.1    2024-04-04 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 htmlwidgets         1.6.4      2023-12-06 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 httpuv              1.6.16     2025-04-16 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 iterators           1.0.14     2022-02-05 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 KernSmooth          2.23-26    2025-01-01 [3] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 later               1.4.2      2025-04-08 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 lattice             0.22-6     2024-03-20 [3] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 lifecycle           1.0.4      2023-11-07 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 limma             * 3.62.2     2025-01-09 [2] Bioconductor 3.20 (R 4.4.2)
 lme4                1.1-37     2025-03-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 lmerTest            3.1-3      2020-10-23 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 locfit              1.5-9.12   2025-03-05 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 magrittr            2.0.3      2022-03-30 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 MASS                7.3-65     2025-02-28 [3] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 Matrix              1.7-2      2025-01-23 [3] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 matrixStats         1.5.0      2025-01-07 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 memoise             2.0.1      2021-11-26 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 mime                0.13       2025-03-17 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 miniUI              0.1.2      2025-04-17 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 minqa               1.2.8      2024-08-17 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 mvtnorm             1.3-3      2025-01-10 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 nlme                3.1-167    2025-01-27 [3] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 nloptr              2.2.1      2025-03-17 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 numDeriv            2016.8-1.1 2019-06-06 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 pbkrtest            0.5.4      2025-04-28 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 pillar              1.10.2     2025-04-05 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 pkgbuild            1.4.7      2025-03-24 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 pkgconfig           2.0.3      2019-09-22 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 pkgload             1.4.0      2024-06-28 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 plyr                1.8.9      2023-10-02 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 profvis             0.4.0      2024-09-20 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 promises            1.3.2      2024-11-28 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 purrr               1.0.4      2025-02-05 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 R6                  2.6.1      2025-02-15 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 rbibutils           2.3        2024-10-04 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 RColorBrewer        1.1-3      2022-04-03 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 Rcpp                1.0.14     2025-01-12 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 Rdpack              2.6.4      2025-04-09 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 reformulas          0.4.1      2025-04-30 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 remaCor             0.0.18     2024-02-08 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 remotes             2.5.0      2024-03-17 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 reshape2            1.4.4      2020-04-09 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 RhpcBLASctl         0.23-42    2023-02-11 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 rlang               1.1.6      2025-04-11 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 scales              1.4.0      2025-04-24 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 sessioninfo         1.2.3      2025-02-05 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 shiny               1.10.0     2024-12-14 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 statmod             1.5.0      2023-01-06 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 stringi             1.8.7      2025-03-27 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.3)
 stringr             1.5.1      2023-11-14 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 testthat          * 3.2.3      2025-01-13 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 tibble              3.2.1      2023-03-20 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 tidyr               1.3.1      2024-01-24 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 tidyselect          1.2.1      2024-03-11 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 urlchecker          1.0.1      2021-11-30 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 usethis           * 3.1.0      2024-11-26 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 variancePartition * 1.36.3     2025-05-13 [1] Github (DiseaseNeuroGenomics/variancePartition@3996ac7)
 vctrs               0.6.5      2023-12-01 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 withr               3.0.2      2024-10-28 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.2)
 xtable              1.8-4      2019-04-21 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)```

Thank you for any guidance or potential fix.

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