Visualization Tools for Genomic Conservation

SynVisio and Accusyn ( genomevis.usask.ca ) are freely available web-based tools for visualizing genomic conservation that provide easy-to-access visualizations for researchers to interact with their datasets and change parameters in real time to carry out synteny exploration and analysis through multiple coordinated visual representations. The tools use standard file formats and outputs from existing synteny detection systems such as MCScanX or DAGChainer, and provide several features that are valuable for large-scale genomic analysis: a range of visualization scales from full genomes down to single collinearity blocks; single-level and multiple-level plots that enable the analysis of more than two genomic regions; annotation tracks that can be loaded using standard BedGraph files; several techniques for reducing visual clutter in visualizations; the ability to download high-quality images of the visualizations; and a snapshot panel for storing configurations of the interface for later revisitation.