Synthesis-View: visualization and interpretation of SNP association results for multi-cohort, multi-phenotype data and meta-analysis

The Synthesis-View software tool was designed to visually synthesize the results of the aforementioned types of studies. Presented herein are multiple examples of the ways Synthesis-View can be used to report results from association studies of DNA variation and phenotypes, including the visual integration of p-values or other metrics of significance, allele frequencies, sample sizes, effect size, and direction of effect.To truly allow a user to visually integrate multiple pieces of information typical of a genetic association study, innovative views are needed to integrate multiple pieces of information. As a result, we have created "Synthesis-View" software for the visualization of genotype-phenotype association data in multiple cohorts. Synthesis-View is freely available for non-commercial research institutions, for full details see https://chgr.mc.vanderbilt.edu/synthesisview webcite.Significant GWAS findings are being further investigated for replication and characterization, both in the populations in which the initial GWAS findings were discovered (such as European-Americans) as well as in new cohorts and populations. To increase power, meta-analysis is often used to combine results from multiple research sites. Multiple independent and correlated phenotypic measurements may be included in these analyses, such as measurements of cardiovascular disease and related biomarkers (lipids, inflammation, etc). Many of these studies characterize less than 100 SNPs. Visualization of these data an integral part of interpreting as well as sharing the complex and multi-layered results of these follow-up studies. The software "Synthesis-View" has been developed to visually synthesize multiple pieces of information of interest from these studies with the flexibility to perform multiple types of data comparisons.Synthesis-View was extended from the previous software "LD-Plus" which also uses a flexible data display format of multiple data "tracks" that can be viewed [1]. Wit