Constellation Map: Downstream visualization and interpretation of gene set enrichment results [version 1; referees: 2 approved]

Abstract

Summary: Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) approaches are widely used to identify coordinately regulated genes associated with phenotypes of interest. Here, we present Constellation Map, a tool to visualize and interpret the results when enrichment analyses yield a long list of significantly enriched gene sets. Constellation Map identifies commonalities that explain the enrichment of multiple top-scoring gene sets and maps the relationships between them. Constellation Map can help investigators take full advantage of GSEA and facilitates the biological interpretation of enrichment results. Availability: Constellation Map is freely available as a GenePattern module at http://www.genepattern.org.

Keywords

• Bioinformatics
• Genetics of the Immune System
• Genomics
• Theory & Simulation