ChromatoShiny: an interactive R/Shiny App for plotting chromatography profiles

Abstract

Background: UnicornTM software on Äkta liquid chromatography instruments outputs chromatography profiles of purified biological macromolecules. While the plots generated by the instrument software are very helpful to inspect basic chromatogram properties, they lack a range of useful annotation, customization and export options. Methods: We use the R Shiny framework to build an interactive app that facilitates the interpretation of chromatograms and the generation of figures for publications. Results: The app allows users to fit a baseline, to highlight selected fractions and elution volumes inside or under the plot (e.g. those used for downstream biochemical/biophysical/structural analysis) and to zoom into the plot. The app is freely available at https://ChromatoShiny.bio.ed.ac.uk. Conclusions:  It requires no programming experience, so we anticipate that it will enable chromatography users to create informative, annotated chromatogram plots quickly and simply.