Interactive Circos, genomic data visualization

Abstract

In the cancer research field, the raw genomic data is in a large magnitude while lacking at readability. Visualization is a significant method in genomic data analysis. The most frequently-used circular layout diagram visualization tool is Circos. Circos is popular for its ability of exploring relationship between objects and flexibility of accommodating multiple layers. However, its drawbacks like Perl-based, complicated configuration files brings difficulties to researchers. Moreover, its output images exists distortion problem at a large scalability. To solve this problem, this project aims to develop a mutation-oriented interactive Circos diagram visualization tool (Hereafter this project will be referred as Interactive Circos). Interactive Circos focus on providing high-quality WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) visualization services with sufficient support for common mutation types in cancer research field. This project is web-based, which guarantee its high accessibility. Besides, this project keeps a balance of both easy-to-use and highly-customized characteristics. It allows users to generate esthetic interactive circular layout diagram efficiently. Once uploading a mutation file, and then Interactive Circos will process it and render pretty diagram quickly. And also it gives users the freedom to adjust as many settings of the diagram as they can imagine. The diagram can be exported in academic standard. Currently, this project is integrated with a cloud-based analysis platform named BTDraw, which is an one-stop bioinformatics visualization platform. This project fills in the BTDraw's lack of circular diagram visualization tool. And it benefits from BTDraw's mature front-end and backend framework. To migrate Interactive Circos to the platform, I also add several new functions which is required by Interactive Circos to the platform, involved with both front-end and backend. These new functions increase the compatibility of the platform and be reused by several other group members of this platform. This project is currently deployed for private testing, and open to public soon. Moreover, it will be updated continuously for long. Our team is always keeping mind in state of the art academic trends, thus, more novel functions will be developed in the future.