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Phylogenetic trees are powerful tools in a biologist's arsenal, as they enable researchers to determine the evolutionary relationships between organisms, genes or proteins of interest in an intuitive and visual manner. From a public health perspective, phylogenies are frequently used in conjunction with sample metadata and genetic distance thresholds to inform and guide further action in potential outbreak and routine surveillance scenarios. Although there are numerous programs available for visualizing phylogenies, such as ggtree, the Interactive Tree of Life (iTOL) and TreeViewer, they were not designed or optimized for use in a public health context and have important limitations. These include limited portability, limited interactivity and in some cases no local deployment option, limiting their use on private, highly confidential data. In addition, these programs provide numerous ways to customize the visualization of phylogenetic data, but they lack the ability to efficiently integrate additional contextual metadata that is key for timely decision making during potential outbreak events and making most of the data integration and intersection.
ArborView was designed to visualize phylogenetic trees with associated sample metadata to facilitate rapid data interpretation and a high level of interactivity essential for visual hypothesis testing and highly multidimensional data exploration. It requires no installation or dependencies, and has an intuitive, clean and responsive graphical user interface (GUI), increasing its accessibility to users with a minimal background in bioinformatics. Thanks to its lightness and use of well established web technologies, it was successfully tested to render trees with >100K nodes. The development team is currently actively working to improve scalability and usability of this web application and user feedback is always welcome.
Wells, Matthew, Bessonov, Kyrylo, Reimer, Aleisha, Cook, Matthew, Deecker-Simon, Shayna, Robertson, James, Peterson, Christy-Lynn. ArborView.
For any questions, issues or comments please make a Github issue or reach out to Matthew Wells.
ArborView has no installation or dependancy requirements. It can be accessed as a static page and was already deployed on repository hosting. The current version of the web-application can be accessed by clicking here.
ArborView is compatible with Windows, MacOS and Linux operating systems as it runs on modern web browsers including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari, which fully support HTML5 standards.
The ArborView application can be divided into three panes: 1) the tree editor; 2) the metadata editor ; and 3) the program functions.
The tree editor is where the phylogeny is visualized within the center portion of the screen.
Clicking on the external light grey node(s) at the end of the branches will add them to the selection list panel so the user can quickly filter the associated metadata for the sample using the Filter data button.
Clicking on the internal dark grey tree node(s) displays a menu that enables the user to select from one of three available options:
- Collapse/Uncollapse branch: Hides all of the branches associated with the node. They can be displayed again by re-selecting the node in question and uncollapsing the branch, or by using the
Redraw treebutton. - Display sub-tree: Uses the selected node as the pseudo-"root" of the tree, enabling the user to "zoom-in" on a clade of interest and render only a subtree from that node. The full tree can be displayed again by using the
Redraw treebutton. - Select all children: Adds all of the external nodes associated with the clade to the selection list.
The metadata editor enables users to view and edit the metadata associated with the phylogeny to add additional contextual information to the analysis. This function also enables the user to quickly and efficiently make changes to the metadata, without needing to open and edit it in a separate program. To make changes permanent, it is possible to export modified metadata into a text file and re-import it at the later date via the Export Full Table button.
For example:
- A phylogeny is coloured by the "National Outbreak Code" column in the associated sample metadata, and the user notices there is an unassigned sample that is clustering with a specific outbreak.
- The user can filter the metadata for that specific sample, and can add the national outbreak code directly to that sample's metadata.
- The edited metadata can then be downloaded via the
Export Full Tablebutton.
The program functions are denoted by the buttons present on the left-hand portion of the screen.
| Program Button | Description |
|---|---|
Upload Newick |
Uploads a Newick file formatted phylogeny for visualization. |
Upload Metadata |
Uploads a tab-delimited metadata file to add additional contextual information to the phylogeny. |
Export IDs |
Exports a list of IDs that correlate to the user-selected nodes of interest on the phylogeny. |
Export SVG |
Exports the current phylogenetic tree as a SVG file. |
Export PNG |
Exports the current phylogenetic tree as a PNG file. |
Export Full Table |
Exports the metadata table as a tab-delimited file. |
Export Filtered Table |
Exports the filtered metadata table as a tab-delimited file. |
Redraw Tree |
Re-builds the phylogeny using the original Newick File. |
Refocus Tree |
Adjusts the view within the tree editor pane so the entire phylogeny is centered and visible on the screen. |
Zoom |
Enables the user to manually adjust the view of the phylogeny within the tree editor. |
Layout |
Enables the user to select if the tree is visualized as rectangular (left on slider), hierarchical (center on slider) or circular (right on slider). |
Legend |
If using colour coding, it shows ("on") or hides ("off") the legend. |
Branch lengths |
Shows ("on") or hides ("off") the branch length values. |
Colour tree by column |
Enables the user to quickly colour the nodes on the tree using a column selected from the associated metadata. If the legend is turned on, the user can click on the boxes to customize the colours that are used for the visualization (as opposed to using the pre-set colour options). |
Filter data |
If a node is selected from the tree using the tree editor, the user can use this button to quickly filter the associated metadata for the sample. To properly export filtered/queried metadata displayed in the metadata editor, press this button to apply current filters followed by the Export Filtered Table button. |
Clear nodes |
Clears the selected nodes from the tree editor. Note this does not remove the nodes, but simply unselects them so other nodes may be selected for further filtering. |
Clear Filters |
Enables the user to clear any filters they may have set on the tree. |
- Must be in the Newick file format.
| sample_id | serovar | mlst_st | earliest_date | state_province | source_type | source_site | age | sex | reported_id | national_outbreak_code |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S1 | Enteritidis | 11.0 | 2021-06-19 | ON | Human | Stool | 20 | F | Salmonella | None |
| S2 | Enteritidis | 11.0 | 2006-01-03 | QC | Animal | Chicken | 52 | M | Salmonella | None |
-
Metadata associated with samples present in the phylogenetic tree.
-
Must be in a tab-delimed file format, with the header as the first line and
sample_idas the first column. This is a mandatory requirement. -
Additional metadata fields could have any name.
-
Phylogenetic trees that are visualized in ArborView can be exported as either PNG or SVG files.
-
It is also possible to export both the full metadata table and a filtered metadata table as tab-delimited files. Do not forget to apply filters by pressing
Filter Databutton before data export.
Copyright Government of Canada 2024
Written by: National Microbiology Laboratory, Public Health Agency of Canada
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this work except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at:
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
Please see the CHANGELOG.md.