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gsGator – an integrated web platform for cross-species gene set analysis
Hyunjung Kang, 1Sooyoung Cho, 2Yeongjun Jang, 1, 2Sanghyuk Lee, 1Wankyu Kim
Ewha Research Center for Systems Biology (ERCSB), Ewha Womans University, Seoul 120-750,
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Korean Bioinformation Center (KOBIC), KRIBB, Daejeon 305-806, Korea
Genome-scale studies typically generate a list of candidate genes. Gene set analysis (GSA) is useful
to interpret its biological theme using a priori defined gene sets such as gene ontology or pathway.
We developed gsGator, a web-based platform for functional interpretation of gene sets with many
useful features such as cross-species GSA, simultaneous analysis of multiple gene sets, and a fully
integrated network viewer. An extensive set of gene annotation information is amassed including
GO & pathway, genomic annotation, molecular network, miRNA target and phenotype information
from various model organisms. gsGator enables virtually fully-automated analysis, providing
intuitive understanding of the relations among genes and gene sets using an interactive network
viewer. Particularly, gsGator supports cross-species GSA in a user-friendly manner, allowing full
utilization of accumulating knowledge e.g. knockout phenotype from model organisms. Crossspecies GSA greatly extends the scope of GSA, leading to the discovery of conserved gene modules
among different species(http://gsGator.ewha.ac.kr).