MeTEor: an R Shiny app for exploring longitudinal metabolomics data.

Abstract

Motivation: The availability of longitudinal omics data is increasing in metabolomics research. Viewing metabolomics data over time provides detailed insight into biological processes and fosters understanding of how systems react over time. However, the analysis of longitudinal metabolomics data poses various challenges, both in terms of statistical evaluation and visualization.

Results: To make explorative analysis of longitudinal data readily available to researchers without formal background in computer science and programming, we present MEtabolite Trajectory ExplORer (MeTEor). MeTEor is an R Shiny app providing a comprehensive set of statistical analysis methods. To demonstrate the capabilities of MeTEor, we replicated the analysis of metabolomics data from a previously published study on COVID-19 patients.

Availability and implementation: MeTEor is available as an R package and as a Docker image. Source code and instructions for setting up the app can be found on GitHub (https://github.com/scibiome/meteor). The Docker image is available at Docker Hub (https://hub.docker.com/r/gordomics/meteor). MeTEor has been tested on Microsoft Windows, Unix/Linux, and macOS.