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Cytoscape is an open source bioinformatics software platform for visualizing molecular interaction networks and biological pathways and integrating these networks with annotations, gene expression profiles and other state data. Although Cytoscape was originally designed for biological research, now it is a general platform for complex network analysis and visualization. Cytoscape core distribution provides a basic set of features for data integration and visualization. Additional features are available as plugins. Plugins are available for network and molecular profiling analyses, new layouts, additional file format support, scripting, and connection with databases. Plugins may be developed by anyone using the Cytoscape open API based on Java™ technology and plugin community development is encouraged. Most of the plugins are freely available.

Cytoscape supports a lot of standard network and annotation file formats including: SIF (Simple Interaction Format), GML, XGMML, BioPAX, PSI-MI, SBML, OBO, and Gene Association. Delimited text files and MS Excel™ Workbook are also supported and you can import data files, such as expression profiles or GO annotations, generated by other applications or spreadsheet programs. Using this feature, you can load and save arbitrary attributes on nodes, edges, and networks. For example, input a set of custom annotation terms for your proteins, create a set of confidence values for your protein-protein interactions.

Cytoscape supports many use cases in molecular and systems biology, genomics, and proteomics:

Load molecular and genetic interaction data sets in many formats
Project and integrate global datasets and functional annotations
Establish powerful visual mappings across these data
Perform advanced analysis and modeling using Cytoscape plugins
Visualize and analyze human-curated pathway datasets such as Reactome or KEGG.