As the meta-analysis suite consists of three packages 1) MetaQC : For quality control 2) MetaPCA: For dimensional reduction 3) MetaDE: To identify deferentially expressed genes I would like to know about MetaPCA R package. The description given in the vignette of the package is that, it is used to reduce the dimension of the data when multiple studies are combined.

Does all the three packages act as a pipeline, if so in which sequence?? I am also not sure, how to interpret the results of MetaPCA R package. Is the package used to find the variation in the data samples of different studies to find out if the samples can be combined together?? Are some samples removed and rest submitted to perform meta-analysis??