MetViz: an online visualization tool for regulons, genes and gene ontology

Background. Interpretation of large volumes of data that has information about genes, regulons, gene ontology and probes are important for the identification of the functionality of individual genes and their role with respect to the organism. Many software tools are available today, but they become difficult to interpret when visualizing large volumes of data and representing relationships between them.;Results. MetViz is an interactive web-based tool that uses novel visualization techniques to represent regulons, genes and the gene ontology hierarchy. The tool provides easier accessibility by making it available as a website requiring no download. Instead of displaying all data and the relationship with each other at once, as is the case with many software tools like Cytoscape, MetViz incrementally displays and associates them based on the user's interaction with the tool. One can radially visualize and organize data based on different quantitative properties such as Intra regulon density, gene count in a regulon and degree of regulons. It minimizes navigation between different windows and pages by maximizing screen utilization. It is also aimed at reducing the number of clicks performed to view and obtain information by providing easily accessible buttons to different functionalities, multiple ways to interact with data and perform the same function, and also making use of unique techniques such as a modified version of the icicle graph to display gene ontology information.;Conclusions. MetViz allows users to search for Gene Ontology terms, Regulons or Genes of interest and obtain information regarding them. It helps in understanding the relationship between Gene Ontology Terms and Regulons, Genes and Regulons & Gene Ontology terms and Genes. It provides vital statistics like the genes present in a particular regulon, their count, evidence data, the pearson correlation matrix between the probes associated with genes, shortest path between regulons to show how closely they are related etcetera. MetViz also enables integration with other softwares such as MetaOmGraph.