Human pluripotent stem cells, derived from embryos or fetal tissue, are providing new opportunities to understand changes in gene regulation. Here we introduce a visualization tool that can be used to investigate how physical locations of genes on a chromosome relate to changes in significant gene expression by cell types. We present the results of an experiment in which induced pluripotent stem cells (iPs) were generated from human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC), and then differentiated back into endothelial cells (EC-Diff) as well as into neuronal cells (Nn-Diff). Our tool encodes significant changes in gene expression and allows for investigation of genes by their ontological classification and physical location. Observing the relationship between location, gene ontology, and expression level across cell types can assist in the identification of patterns in gene regulation changes. This novel tool can shed light on why stem cells differentiate into one cell type over another, with applications for modeling and treatment in the realms of neurodegeneration and cardiovascular disease. Our results have the potential to bridge the gap between complicated datasets resulting from experiments on cells, and biologists with the domain knowledge to properly draw conclusions about pathway activation.
