Portable-CELLxGENE: standalone executables of CELLxGENE for easy installation

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.