PhyD3: a phylogenetic tree viewer with extended phyloXML support for functional genomics data visualization

Motivation: Comparative and evolutionary studies utilise phylogenetic trees to analyse and visualise biological data. Recently, several web-based tools for the display, manipulation, and annotation of phylogenetic trees, such as iTOL and Evolview, have released updates to be compatible with the latest web technologies. While those web tools operate an open server access model with a multitude of registered users, a feature-rich open source solution using current web technologies is not available.

Results: Here, we present an extension of the widely used PhyloXML standard with several new options to accommodate functional genomics or annotation datasets for advanced visualization. Furthermore, PhyD3 has been developed as a lightweight tool using the JavaScript library D3.js to achieve a state-of-the-art phylogenetic tree visualisation in the web browser, with support for advanced annotations. The current implementation is open source, easily adaptable and easy to implement in third parties' web sites.

Availability: More information about PhyD3 itself, installation procedures, and implementation links are available at http://phyd3.bits.vib.be and at http://github.com/vibbits/phyd3/.

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