J-Circos: A Java Graphic User Interface for Circos Plot — ASN Events

J-Circos: A Java Graphic User Interface for Circos Plot (#77)

Jiyuan An , John Lai , ChenWei wang , Melanie Lehman , Colleen Nelson
Circos plots are graphical outputs that have many useful applications such as displaying three dimensional chromosomal interactions, and fusion transcripts. However, the Circos tool is difficult for non-bioinformaticians to use as the Perl-implemented Circos tool requires users to install related packages and processed data files in a unix environment. This has resulted in the development of an R-based circos tool (RCircos), although R-circos is equally inaccessible for non-bioinformaticians to use. Thus, we have developed a circos plot tool (J-Circos) that is targeted towards biologists with limited bioinformatics skills as it uses an intuitive Graphic User Interface (GUI). J-Circosuses Java computer language to enable it to be used on most operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux). User can input data into J-Circos using flat data formats, as well as from the GUI. Additionally, J-Circos has a mouse hover function that provides information for specific data points. Collectively, J-Circos is an easy-to-use tool that is accessible for biologists to use. This will enable biologists to further study more complex chromosomal interactions and fusion transcripts that are otherwise difficult to visualise from next-generation sequencing data