Comut plot, introduced by Nicolas Stransky, is often seen in cancer research publications as a visual summary of genetic variations/mutations in cancer cohorts. The plot itself is essentially an ensemble of multiple smaller and simpler plots (e.g. heat maps and bar graphs) aligned and interconnected via a common X or Y axis. This form of grid-like graphical summary is particularly suitable for presenting data with an intricate and associative nature. iCoMut aims to further transform the static image into an interactive data exploring experience that is flexible and versatile, and through a web-enabled user interface, provides greater public access.

Broad TCGA GDAC data and analyses summaries provided by Jaegil Kim, Hailei Zhang, Juok Cho, and David Heiman.
iCoMut is developed by Katherine Huang, Sam Meier, Nome Shoresh, Eila Arich-Landkof, Michael Noble, Gad Getz at Broad Institute.

Tutorial

Data Sorting Options

By default, patients in a cancer cohort are sorted first by the histological subtypes (if available), then by the gene mutations.

Data can be sorted by clicking on the text labels of the axes and the heat maps. To perform a multi-key sorting, alt-click on a text label to add a key.

Many sorting options of the patients can be done by direct clicking. Here, for example, patients are sorted by age (click) then by focal-level copy number gain (alt-click on "Multi-Key Sort" option of the copy number heat map).

The Pop-Up Box

The pop-up info box reports the sorting status of the patients and the box is draggable for adjusting its location on screen.

Panel Layout Rearrangement

A panel can be collapsed by clicking on the minus icon.

Horizontal panels can be rearranged by drag and drop using the minus/plus icons located on the left of the panel titles.

Collapse and Expand Panels

Control buttons, for collapsing and expanding all panels, are conveniently provided at the top of the comut plot. Additionally, by first collapsing all panels, the rearrangement of the layout order of panels can be done more easily by drag and dropping the plus sign next the panel title.

Interactive Heat Maps

Clicking (or alt-clicking) a row name will sort the columns (i.e. patients) by the row. The sorting order is toggled by clicking the same row name again.
Additionally, users can easily rearrange the order of rows by dragging and dropping the row names.

Clicking 'Show Grids' will show all the rectangles in a heat map, including the ones with no data. When in this mode, the cross-hair cursor is also shown. The cursor can be locked in at a rectangle by double-clicking. The locked cross-hair cursor will appear double-lined. To unlock the cursor, click again. Click 'Hide Grids' to hide the grids and cross-hair cursor. By not showing all the graphical elements in a heat map, the visual rendering is faster.

Searching samples by keyword highlights all the sample columns that match the keyword.