A guide and best practices for R/Bioconductor tool integration in Galaxy

Abstract

Galaxy provides a web-based platform for interactive, large-scale data analyses, which integrates bioinformatics tools written in a variety of languages. A substantial number of these tools are written in the R programming language, which enables powerful analysis and visualization of complex data. The Bioconductor Project provides access to these open source R tools and currently contains over 1200 R packages. While some R/Bioconductor tools are currently available in Galaxy, scientific research communities would benefit greatly if they were integrated on a larger scale. Tool development in Galaxy is an early entry point for Galaxy developers, biologists, and bioinformaticians, who want to make their work more accessible to a larger community of scientists. Here, we present a guide and best practices for R/Bioconductor tool integration into Galaxy. In addition, we introduce new functionalities to existing software that resolve dependency issues and semi-automate generation of tool integration components. With these improvements, novice and experienced developers can easily integrate R/Bioconductor tools into Galaxy to make their work more accessible to the scientific community.