nested cell arrays from tables

Hello,

I have got a question regarding nested cell arrays. I have two tables, one which is giving me values per participant for 50 000 so-called SNPs in total. A second table is referring those 50 000 SNPs to roughly 20 000 genes. Each gene consists of a number of SNPs.

What I want is a cell array which shows the 20 000 genes on it's first interface, and if I click on one of the genes, I want it to open the corresponding table of all associated SNPs and the single values per participant, as given in the first table.

I have looked but found no solution to how to do that, especially because of the size of data, I cannot do that manually, but it needs to be automated in some way. I was also wondering how to take the information about the genes-SNP-correspondance and to sort the SNP values from the other table based on that classification.

I hope it gets clear what I am asking for and excuse me, if I am not clear enough or there is a solution I can adapt from somewhere else.

Best regards

Answer 1

[Bob Thompson]

Without having seen your data I don't know that I will be able to come up with something perfect, but hopefully this will give you somewhere to start.

I think that cells may not be the best choice for you, simply because I think it will be very easy to get lost. I would suggest a structure instead, as then you can have direct names to keep things organized.

SNP = tableread('SNPsFile.txt'); % Just loading your data to define my variable names
Genes = tableread('GenesFile.txt'); % Loading table of gene data

organized = struct('gene',Genes(:,1)); % Put genes into 'gene' field of new structure array. 
                                       % Also helps to preallocate.
for i = 1:size(Genes,1); % Loop through each gene
    [organized(i).SNPs] = SNP(SNP(:,1) == organized(i).gene,2:end); % No idea how these exactly relate
    % You will need to adjust the logic yourself, or describe how things are related
end

Due to the size of the data you're working with it's going to take a few minutes, that's just a guarenteed thing with MATLAB, but this concept should get you started on how to move things around.

[Jennifer Sander]

Thank you for your answer. Sadly the further analysis requires the data to be in a cell array of the above described form.