Circular Gene Ontology (CirGO)

Circular Gene Ontology (CirGO) visualizes non-redundant, two-level hierarchical Gene Ontology terms in a circular 2D layout to summarize enriched GO terms derived from differential gene expression analyses using statistical significance and semantic similarity.

Key Features:

• Circular 2D layout: Renders Gene Ontology terms in a circular arrangement to reduce visual clutter compared with traditional tree-map representations.
• Two-level hierarchical representation: Presents ontology terms as a non-redundant, two-level hierarchy.
• Semantic similarity summarization: Uses a semantic similarity algorithm to summarize related GO terms.
• Statistical significance prioritization: Leverages statistical significance to prioritize and summarize enriched terms.
• Hierarchical clustering: Applies hierarchical clustering to group semantically similar terms and order them from most to least significant.
• Label preservation: Displays labels comprehensively in the 2D layout to avoid omission due to spatial constraints.
• Color encoding and supporting information: Encodes groups and supporting details with color to aid interpretation.
• Input compatibility: Designed to visualize Gene Ontology enrichment results derived from differential gene expression analyses.

Scientific Applications:

• GO enrichment visualization: Visualizes enriched Gene Ontology terms from differential gene expression analyses for interpretation.
• Redundancy reduction: Produces condensed, non-redundant summaries of large GO term lists to facilitate biological interpretation.
• Interpretation and communication: Provides an informative figure format for reporting and communicating GO enrichment results in scientific analyses.

Methodology:

Summarizes GO terms using statistical significance and a semantic similarity algorithm, applies hierarchical clustering to group terms, and renders a non-redundant two-level circular 2D layout; implemented in Python.