High-throughput genomic, transcriptomic and proteomics technologies have transformed biological research by enabling comprehensive investigations of biological systems. Analysis of the resulted genome-scale data typically yields lists of interesting genes or proteins. How to translate the identified gene sets into a better understanding of the underlying biological themes has become a fundamental need in biological research. In response to this critical need, in the 2005 NAR (Nucleic Acids Research) Web Server Issue, we presented WebGestalt (WEB-based GEne SeT AnaLysis Toolkit) (1), one of the first software applications that integrate functional enrichment analysis and information visualization for the management, information retrieval, organization, visualization and statistical analysis of large sets of genes. Ever since its publication, the tool has been widely used in large-scale genetic, transcriptomic and proteomic studies, with more than 400 citations reported by Google Scholar as of the time of writing.
