wCLUTO: A Web-Enabled Clustering Toolkit

Abstract

As structural and functional genomics efforts provide the biological community with ever-broadening sets of interrelated data, the need to explore such complex information for subtle relationships expands. We present wCLUTO, a Web-enabled version of the stand-alone application CLUTO, designed to apply clustering methods to genomic information. Its first application is focused on the clustering transcriptome data from microarrays. Data can be uploaded by the user into the clustering tool, a choice of several clustering methods can be made and configured, and data are presented to the user in a variety of visual formats, including a three-dimensional “mountain” view of the clusters. Parameters can be explored to rapidly examine a variety of clustering results, and the resulting clusters can be downloaded either for manipulation by other programs or to be saved in a format for publication.