BACKGROUND Most biological experiments are inherently designed to compare changes or transitions of state between conditions of interest. The advancements in data intensive research have in particular elevated the need for resources and tools enabling comparative analysis of biological data. The complexity of biological systems and the interactions of their various components, such as genes, proteins, taxa, and metabolites, have been inferred, represented, and visualized via graph theory-based networks. Comparisons of multiple networks can help in identifying variations across different biological systems, thereby providing additional insights. However, while a number of online and stand-alone tools exist for generating, analyzing, and visualizing individual biological networks, the utility to batch process and comprehensively compare multiple networks is limited. RESULTS Here, we present a graphical user interface (GUI)-based web application which implements multiple network comparison methodologies and presents them in the form of organized analysis workflows. Dedicated comparative visualization modules are provided to the end-users for obtaining easy to comprehend, insightful, and meaningful comparisons of various biological networks. We demonstrate the utility and power of our tool using publicly available microbial and gene expression data. CONCLUSION NetConfer tool is developed keeping in mind the requirements of researchers working in the field of biological data analysis with limited programming expertise. It is also expected to be useful for advanced users from biological as well as other domains (working with association networks), benefiting from provided ready-made workflows, as they allow to focus directly on the results without worrying about the implementation. While the web version allows using this application without installation and dependency requirements, a stand-alone version has also been supplemented to accommodate the offline requirement of processing large networks.

中文翻译：

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NetConfer：用于对多个生物网络进行比较分析的Web应用程序。

背景技术大多数生物学实验被固有地设计为比较感兴趣条件之间状态的改变或转变。数据密集型研究的进步尤其增加了对资源和工具的需求，这些资源和工具能够对生物数据进行比较分析。已经通过基于图论的网络推断，表示和可视化了生物系统的复杂性及其各个组成部分（例如基因，蛋白质，分类群和代谢物）的相互作用。多个网络的比较可以帮助识别不同生物系统之间的变异，从而提供更多的见解。但是，尽管存在许多用于生成，分析和可视化单个生物网络的在线和独立工具，批处理和全面比较多个网络的实用程序受到限制。结果在这里，我们介绍了一个基于图形用户界面（GUI）的Web应用程序，该应用程序实现了多种网络比较方法，并以有组织的分析工作流程的形式对其进行了介绍。专门的比较可视化模块提供给最终用户，以获取各种生物网络的易于理解，有见地和有意义的比较。我们使用可公开获得的微生物和基因表达数据证明了我们工具的实用性和力量。结论开发NetConfer工具时要考虑到在生物学数据分析领域工作的研究人员的需求，他们的编程知识有限。受益于提供的现成工作流程，它也有望对生物学以及其他领域（与关联网络合作）的高级用户有用，因为他们可以直接关注结果而无需担心实现。虽然Web版本允许使用此应用程序，而无需安装和依赖，但也补充了独立版本，以适应处理大型网络的离线需求。