How to convert my first column containing duplicate names to the row names

I have a gene expression dataset

> View (p53genes)

     Genesymbol     WT1        WT2          WT3        MUT1         MUT2
1   NAT2         2.707238   2.960215       3.554969  2.219525   3.812129
2   NAT2         7.861489   7.128331       7.190403  7.481062   8.034329
3   ADA          6.624238   4.828936       6.467866  6.430245   2.221382
4   CDH2         6.676011   6.015457       6.293267  6.649966   4.123641
5   CDH2         4.508974   6.093028       5.223152  4.579542   6.144728

when I do

>p53genes2 <- rownames(p53genes)

I am getting "1" "2" "3" "4" as my rownames

So I did

>rownames(p53genes) <- p53genes[,1]

Error: duplicate 'row.names' are not allowed

So how can I take my rownames as my genesymbols and not the numerics 1,2,3?

Thank you in advance for your responses.

r alignment software error rna-seq sequencing

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updated 6.5 years ago by swbarnes2

• written 6.5 years ago by koushikayaluri •

You have duplicated gene names. How comes?

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written 6.5 years ago by Asaf

Obviously, in R duplicate 'row.names' are not allowed. How could R identify your rows when they have the identical row name?

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written 6.5 years ago by wuzj42 •

1 answer

You can't make gene names row names, as they might not be unique, and in your data, they are not.

Far smarter to stick to refseq IDs or ensembl ids, which are unique.

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written 6.5 years ago by swbarnes2