NASQAR: A web-based platform for High-throughput sequencing data analysis and visualization

As high-throughput sequencing applications continue to evolve, the rapid growth in quantity and variety of sequence-based data calls for the development of new software libraries and tools for data analysis and visualization. Often, effective use of these tools requires computational skills beyond those of many researchers. To lower this computational barrier, we have created a dynamic web-based platform, NASQAR (Nucleic Acid SeQuence Analysis Resource). NASQAR provides an intuitive interface that allows users to easily and efficiently explore their data in an interactive way using popular tools for a variety of applications, including Transcriptome Data Preprocessing, RNAseq Analysis (including Single-cell RNAseq), Metagenomics, and Gene Enrichment. NASQAR offers a collection of custom and publicly available open-source web applications that make extensive use of the Shiny R package to provide interactive data visualization. The platform is publicly accessible at http://nasqar.abudhabi.nyu.edu/. NASQAR is open-source and the code is available through GitHub at https://github.com/nasqar/NASQAR. NASQAR is also available as a Docker image at https://hub.docker.com/r/aymanm/nasqarall. NASQAR is a collaboration between the core bioinformatics teams of the NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU New York Centers for Genomics and Systems Biology.