Coral: Clear and Customizable Visualization of Human Kinome Data

Abstract

Protein kinases represent one of the largest gene families in eukaryotes and play roles in a wide range of cell signaling processes and human diseases. Current tools for visualizing kinase data in the context of the human kinome superfamily are limited to encoding data through the addition of nodes to a low-resolution image of the kinome tree. We present Coral, a user-friendly interactive web application for visualizing both quantitative and qualitative data. Unlike previous tools, Coral can encode data in three features (node color, node size, and branch color), allows three modes of kinome visualization (the traditional kinome tree as well as radial and dynamic force networks), and generates high-resolution scalable vector graphics files suitable for publication without the need for refinement using graphics editing software. Due to its user-friendly, interactive, and highly customizable design, Coral is broadly applicable to high-throughput studies of the human kinome. The source code and web application are available at github.com/dphansti/CORAL and phanstiel-lab.med.unc.edu/Coral, respectively.

Keywords: data visualization; kinase; kinome.