OncotreeVIS - an interactive graphical user interface for visualizing mutation tree cohorts

Abstract

MotivationIn recent years, developments in single-cell next-generation sequencing technology and computational methodology have made it possible to reconstruct, with increasing precision, the evolutionary history of tumors and their cell phylogenies, represented as mutation trees. Many mutation tree inference tools exist, but they do not support detailed visual tree inspection, nor tree comparisons or analysis at the cohort level, an important task in computational oncology. ResultsWe developed oncotreeVIS, an interactive graphical user interface for visualizing mutation tree cohorts and tree posterior distributions obtained from mutation tree inference tools. Oncotree-VIS can display mutation trees that encode single or joint genetic events, such as point mutations and copy number changes, and highlight matching subclones, conserved trajectories and drug-gene interactions at cohort level. OncotreeVIS facilitates the visual inspection of mutation tree clusters and pairwise tree distances. It is available both as a JavaScript library that can be used locally or as a web application that can be accessed online. It includes seven default datasets of public mutation tree cohorts for visualization, while new mutation trees are provided in a predefined JSON format. Availability and implementationhttps://github.com/cbg-ethz/oncotreeVIS. Web applicationhttps://cbg-ethz.github.io/oncotreeVIS.