RhythmInsight: An Interactive Web Platform for Circadian and Diurnal Rhythmic Analysis and Visualization.

Abstract

Circadian rhythms are endogenous biological cycles with a period of approximately 24 h that integrate a wide range of physiological and behavioral processes in living organisms. In addition to circadian rhythms, many other biological processes also exhibit diurnal (24 h) rhythms driven by external environmental cues. With the significance of circadian and diurnal regulation becoming increasingly recognized, the field of chronobiology is exhibiting unprecedented growth in the life sciences and translational medicine. Over the past 2 decades, a variety of computational methods have been developed to detect and extract rhythmic signals from the time-series data of different species. However, existing rhythmic analysis tools are often fragmented, demand programming expertise, exhibit limited visualization capabilities, and impose inconsistent requirements on data types and sampling intervals. Therefore, there is an urgent need to establish a convenient and comprehensive tool for detecting and analyzing the circadian and diurnal rhythmicity. To meet this demand, RhythmInsight was developed as an open access, web-based platform for comprehensive analysis and visualization of circadian and diurnal rhythms across various species and data types, including physiological, omics, and experimental data. RhythmInsight includes 3 modules: Rhythmic Analysis, Differential Rhythmicity Analysis, and Rhythmic Visualization. The Rhythmic Analysis module incorporates 9 algorithms (JTK_CYCLE, Cosinor, CircaCompare, meta2d, Lomb-Scargle, RAIN, ARSER, Fisher's G-test, and Robust G-test) to detect and characterize rhythmic signals. The Differential Rhythmicity Analysis module, based on CircaCompare, detects and compares rhythmic parameters (amplitude, phase, and the Midline Estimating Statistic of Rhythm) between 2 experimental conditions. The Rhythmic Visualization module provides powerful graphical tools, including line plots, fitted curves, heatmaps, polar plots, and boxplots, for the intuitive visualization of time-dependent trends. By integrating rhythmic algorithmic analysis with interactive visualization, RhythmInsight simplifies the analysis process and enhances accessibility for researchers without programming backgrounds, particularly experimental biologists and early-career scientists. RhythmInsight is freely available at https://RhythmInsight.com.