Use the latest version of Circos and read Circos best practices—these list recent important changes and identify sources of common problems.
If you are having trouble, post your issue to the Circos Google Group and include all files and detailed error logs. Please do not email me directly unless it is urgent—you are much more likely to receive a timely reply from the group.
Don't know what question to ask? Read Points of View: Visualizing Biological Data by Bang Wong, myself and invited authors from the Points of View series.
tools/categoryviewer
> cd tools/categoryviewer # use canned data > ./makeimage # which runs > cat data/individuals.txt | bin/parse-category -conf etc/parse-category.conf > data/links.txt 2> data/karyotype.txt > ../../bin/circos -conf etc/circos.conf
The input data must be tab delimited. The individuals.txt file is an example of a randomly generated set of eye color, hair color, height and sex of 1000 individuals.
The output of parse-category is the link file, sent to STDOUT (redirect with >), and the karyotype file, sent to STDERR (redirect with 2>).
For the example data set, I have randomly generated a putative survey responses of 1000 individuals that asked questions about sex, hair color, eye color and height. Each record corresponds to a respondent's answers.
0 female f red 3 green 2 165 1 female f blonde 0 blue 1 156 2 female f brown 1 grey 3 157 3 male m brown 1 green 2 165 4 female f black 2 blue 1 164 5 female f brown 1 green 2 158 ... 996 male m red 3 grey 3 179 997 female f red 3 green 2 163 998 female f black 2 brown 0 161 999 female f brown 1 brown 0 160
Each responses is given in full (e.g. green) as well as a code. The codes for hair are blonde=0, brown=1, black=2 and red=3. The codes for eyes are brown=0, blue=1, green=2 and grey=3. Height is in centimeters.
The data were geneated using a probability model in which used the frequency of hair color in the population and the probabilistic relationship between hair and eye color. This is a primitive model with manufactured parameters, but serves to illustrate the benefits of Circos visualizations of categorical data.
The first sample configuration file, etc/parse-category.conf, generates an image that compares hair and eye color. The start of the links are defined by column 4 (0-index). This is the column that contains the hair code (0-3). The color parameter defines the color of the segments from which the links will start.
<link_start> id = hair col = 4 min = 0 max = 3 rx = \d color = orange </link_start>
Link ends are defined by the eye color code, found in column 6. Eye color segments will be green.
<link_start> id = eye col = 6 min = 0 max = 3 rx = \d color = green </link_start>
Once the categories for the start and end of the links are defined, the data file is parsed and turned into a format that Circos can use. One set of segments will correspond to hair color, with a segment for each distinct hair color code (value found in column 4). Another set of segments will correspond to eye color. Links between them will encode the number of records with a given hair/eye color combination.
In the first example image, the color of the links is determined by the value in column 2, which contains either "m" (male) or "f" (female). The values block defines the link format values for each value in this column.
<link_coding sex> order = 2 use = yes col = 2 <values> m = color=black_a4 f = color=black_a8 </values> </link_coding>
You can add more coding blocks, which are evaluated in order of the value of the order parameter. For example,
<link_coding height> order = 1 use = yes col = 7 <values> 158 = stroke_color=green,stroke_thickness=3p 159 = stroke_color=green,stroke_thickness=3p 160 = stroke_color=green,stroke_thickness=3p 161 = stroke_color=green,stroke_thickness=3p 162 = stroke_color=green,stroke_thickness=3p 168 = stroke_color=red,stroke_thickness=3p 169 = stroke_color=red,stroke_thickness=3p 170 = stroke_color=red,stroke_thickness=3p 171 = stroke_color=red,stroke_thickness=3p 172 = stroke_color=red,stroke_thickness=3p </values> </link_coding>
The rules for link formatting are simple: (1) rules triggered later (based on order parameter) overwrite any formatting set by previous rules, and (2) records with the same formatting form independent ribbons. The consequence of (2) is that you can subdivide a group of records for a given start/end category value (e.g. blonde hair/blue eye) into smaller groups based on other values (e.g. blonde/blue males and females, or blonde/blue males 170cm and blonde/blue females 160cm).
The order of the start and end of the ribbons on each segment is controlled by the <link_order> blocks. The following ways of ordering ribbons are supported
Ribbon order is defined in the <link_order> block and specified for the start and end of the ribbon. For example,
<link_order> start = otherend end = size </link_order>
The radial position of a ribbon can be adjusted based on any column value. This is done using <radius> blocks within the <link_start> and <link_end> blocks. The radius of the ribbon is mapped onto radius min-max range (rmin-rmax) based on the value of a column (possibly remapped) and a range of acceptable values (min-max).
For example, the block
<link_start> ... <radius> use = yes col = 7 remap = int((190-int(x))/5) min = 0 max = 10 rmin = 0.7 rmax = 0.98 </radius> </link_start>
will place the start of the ribbon at a radius proportional to a remapped height value. The height value is sampled from column 7 and remapped according to the remap parameter. The effect of the remap parameter as shown here is to map the height values, which range 144-189, to a range 0-9.
Just like for formatting, radial values are used to split the record set. If you have a large number of possible radial values, you will wind up with a large number of thin ribbons, since it's likely that no more than a few records will have the same radial value. It is therefore a good idea to bin adjacent radial values together to reduce the number of ribbons and avoid having a busy, uninterpretable figure.