Sungear: interactive visualization and functional analysis of genomic datasets

Abstract

Sungear is a software system that supports a rapid, visually interactive and biologist-driven comparison of large datasets. The datasets can come from microarray experiments (e.g. genes induced in each experiment), from comparative genomics (e.g. genes present in each genome) or even from non-biological applications (e.g. demographics or baseball statistics). Sungear represents multiple datasets as vertices in a polygon. Each possible intersection among the sets is represented as a circle inside the polygon. The position of the circle is determined by the position of the vertices represented in the intersection and the area of the circle is determined by the number of elements in the intersection. Sungear shows which Gene Ontology terms are over-represented in a subset of circles or anchors. The intuitive Sungear interface has enabled biologists to determine quickly which dataset or groups of datasets play a role in a biological function of interest. A live online version of Sungear can be found at http://virtualplant-prod.bio.nyu.edu/cgi-bin/sungear/index.cgi