OrthoNets: simultaneous visual analysis of orthologs and their interaction neighborhoods across different organisms

Motivation: Protein interaction networks contain a wealth of biological information, but their large size often hinders cross-organism comparisons. We present OrthoNets, a Cytoscape plugin that displays protein–protein interaction (PPI) networks from two organisms simultaneously, highlighting orthology relationships and aggregating several types of biomedical annotations. OrthoNets also allows PPI networks derived from experiments to be overlaid on networks extracted from public databases, supporting the identification and verification of new interactors. Any newly identified PPIs can be validated by checking whether their orthologs interact in another organism. Availability: OrthoNets is freely available at http://wodaklab.org/orthonets/. Contact: jim.vlasblom@utoronto.ca