Portable-CELLxGENE: standalone executables of CELLxGENE for easy installation

TL;DR

Portable-CELLxGENE is a standalone, easy-to-install version of CELLxGENE that simplifies single-cell transcriptomics analysis for non-expert biologists by providing a graphical interface and multi-dataset support.

Contribution

It introduces a portable, user-friendly distribution of CELLxGENE with enhanced installation and dataset analysis capabilities for non-bioinformaticians.

Findings

Easier installation process for CELLxGENE on Windows and MacOS

Supports analysis of multiple datasets through an extended Python package

Available as open-source software on GitHub

Abstract

Biologists who want to analyse their single-cell transcriptomics dataset must install and use specialist software via the command line. This is often impractical for non-bioinformaticians. Whilst the popular CELLxGENE software provides an intuitive graphical interface to facilitate analysis outside the command line, its server-side installation and execution remain complex. A version that is easier to install and run would allow non-bioinformaticians to take advantage of this valuable tool without needing to use the command line. Portable-CELLxGENE is a standalone distribution of CELLxGENE that can be installed via a graphical interface. It contains an easy-to-use extension of the CELLxGENE-Gateway Python package to allow the analysis of multiple datasets. Availability and implementation: Versions of Portable-CELLxGENE for Windows and MacOS, along with its source code, are available at github.com/george-hall-ucl/portable-cellxgene. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.