FGviewer: an online visualization tool for functional features of human fusion genes.

Abstract

Among the diverse location of the breakpoints (BPs) of structural variants (SVs), the breakpoints of fusion genes (FGs) are located in the gene bodies. This broken gene context provided the aberrant functional clues to study disease genesis. Many tumorigenic fusion genes have retained or lost functional or regulatory domains and these features impacted tumorigenesis. Full annotation of fusion genes aided by the visualization tool based on two gene bodies will be helpful to study the functional aspect of fusion genes. To date, a specialized tool with effective visualization of the functional features of fusion genes is not available. In this study, we built FGviewer, a tool for visualizing functional features of human fusion genes, which is available at https://ccsmweb.uth.edu/FGviewer. FGviewer gets the input of fusion gene symbols, breakpoint information, or structural variants from whole-genome sequence (WGS) data. For any combination of gene pairs/breakpoints to be involved in fusion genes, the users can search the functional/regulatory aspect of the fusion gene in the three bio-molecular levels (DNA-, RNA-, and protein-levels) and one clinical level (pathogenic-level). FGviewer will be a unique online tool in disease research communities.