Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine (Aug 2022)

PlaqView 2.0: A comprehensive web portal for cardiovascular single-cell genomics

  • Wei Feng Ma,
  • Wei Feng Ma,
  • Adam W. Turner,
  • Christina Gancayco,
  • Doris Wong,
  • Doris Wong,
  • Yipei Song,
  • Yipei Song,
  • Jose Verdezoto Mosquera,
  • Jose Verdezoto Mosquera,
  • Gaëlle Auguste,
  • Chani J. Hodonsky,
  • Ajay Prabhakar,
  • H. Atakan Ekiz,
  • Sander W. van der Laan,
  • Clint L. Miller,
  • Clint L. Miller,
  • Clint L. Miller

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2022.969421
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

Read online

Single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) is a powerful genomics technology to interrogate the cellular composition and behaviors of complex systems. While the number of scRNA-seq datasets and available computational analysis tools have grown exponentially, there are limited systematic data sharing strategies to allow rapid exploration and re-analysis of single-cell datasets, particularly in the cardiovascular field. We previously introduced PlaqView, an open-source web portal for the exploration and analysis of published atherosclerosis single-cell datasets. Now, we introduce PlaqView 2.0 (www.plaqview.com), which provides expanded features and functionalities as well as additional cardiovascular single-cell datasets. We showcase improved PlaqView functionality, backend data processing, user-interface, and capacity. PlaqView brings new or improved tools to explore scRNA-seq data, including gene query, metadata browser, cell identity prediction, ad hoc RNA-trajectory analysis, and drug-gene interaction prediction. PlaqView serves as one of the largest central repositories for cardiovascular single-cell datasets, which now includes data from human aortic aneurysm, gene-specific mouse knockouts, and healthy references. PlaqView 2.0 brings advanced tools and high-performance computing directly to users without the need for any programming knowledge. Lastly, we outline steps to generalize and repurpose PlaqView's framework for single-cell datasets from other fields.

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