Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope enables in silico exploration of omics signatures and comparative differential gene expression analyses across public and user-provided datasets to support hypothesis generation.

Key Features:

• Integration of Omics Databases: Provides access to a range of publicly available omics databases for comprehensive exploration of genomic and transcriptomic data.
• Support for user-uploaded datasets: Accepts user-supplied datasets for combined analysis alongside public database resources.
• Protein–protein interaction and tissue/cell-type expression analysis: Enables investigation of protein-protein interaction networks and analysis of expression levels across tissues and cell types, including brain-specific analyses.
• Gene-centric queries (DISC1 example): Supports single-gene queries such as DISC1 (Disrupted in Schizophrenia 1) to seed downstream network and expression analyses.
• Differential Expression Analysis: Facilitates comparative examination of differential gene expression datasets, exemplified by schizophrenia versus control comparisons across 34 datasets.

Scientific Applications:

• Hypothesis generation and testing in disease research: Supports in silico generation and testing of hypotheses related to medical disorders and complex biological phenomena.
• Comparative transcriptomics in psychiatric disorders: Enables cross-dataset comparative transcriptomic analyses for psychiatric research, including schizophrenia case-control comparisons across multiple datasets.
• Exploration of molecular interactions and tissue specificity: Facilitates examination of protein–protein interactions and tissue/cell-type-specific gene expression patterns, with applicability to brain-focused studies.

Methodology:

Implemented as an R Shiny application.