CLARA: A web portal for interactive exploration of the cardiovascular cellular landscape in health and disease

Abstract

Mammalian cardiovascular tissues are comprised of complex and diverse collections of cells. Recent advances in single-cell profiling technologies have accelerated our understanding of tissue cellularity and the molecular networks that orchestrate cardiovascular development, maintain homeostasis, and are disrupted in pathological states. Despite the rapid development and application of these technologies, many cardiac single-cell functional genomics datasets remain inaccessible for most cardiovascular biologists. Access to custom visual representations of the data, including querying changes in cellular phenotypes and interactions in diverse contexts, remains unavailable in publicly accessible data portals. Visualizing data is also challenging for scientists without expertise in processing single-cell genomic data. Here we present CLARA—CardiovascuLAR Atlas—a web portal facilitating exploration of the cardiovascular cellular landscape. Using mouse and human single-cell transcriptomic datasets, CLARA enables scientists unfamiliar with single-cell-omic data analysis approaches to examine gene expression patterns and the cell population dynamics of cardiac cells in a range of contexts. The web-application also enables investigation of intercellular interactions that form the cardiac cellular niche. CLARA is designed for ease-of-use and we anticipate that the portal will aid deeper exploration of cardiovascular cellular landscapes in the context of development, homeostasis and disease. CLARA is freely available at https://clara.baker.edu.au.