18.4 ggsci

Package {ggsci} contains a collection of pre-made color palettes inspired by colors used in scientific journals (and also by Science Fiction movies and series!).

Example of palettes from {ggsci}:

  • scale_color_npg() and scale_fill_npg() (Nature Publishing Group)
  • scale_color_aaas() and scale_fill_aaas(): (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
  • scale_color_lancet() and scale_fill_lancet() (Lancet)
  • scale_color_igv() and scale_fill_igv() (Integrative Genome Viewer)
  • scale_color_gsea() and scale_fill_gsea() (Gene Set Enrichment Analysis)
  • scale_color_startrek() and scale_fill_startrek()
  • scale_color_simpsons() and scale_fill_simpsons()

Note that some palettes are for continuous variables (e.g. gsea), and some for discrete variables (e.g. npg).

Example of scales for discrete data:

# do not forget to load the package!
library(ggsci)

ggplot(data=gtf, mapping=aes(x=chr, fill=gene_type)) + 
  geom_bar(position="dodge") +
  ggtitle("scale_fill_ngp", subtitle = "Nature Publishing Group") +
  scale_fill_npg()

ggplot(data=gtf, mapping=aes(x=chr, fill=gene_type)) + 
  geom_bar(position="dodge") +
  ggtitle("scale_fill_aaas", subtitle = "American Association for the Advancement of Science") +
  scale_fill_aaas()

Example of a scale for continuous data:

 ggplot(data=geneexp, mapping=aes(x=WT1, y=WT2, color=KO1)) + 
  geom_point() + scale_color_gsea()