KEGGaNOG

Motivation

eggNOG-mapper 🤝 KEGG-Decoder

• eggNOG-mapper is a comprehensive tool for fast functional annotation of novel sequences. Yet it does not provide any visualization functions.
• KEGG-Decoder is a perfect tool for visualizing KEGG Pathways. But it only takes KEGG-Koala outputs as an input (including blastKOALA, ghostKOALA, KOFAMSCAN).
• KEGG-Koala is a web-tool which can work for more than 24 hours. eggNOG-mapper can be installed locally on your PC / server and work faster.
• This tool KEGGaNOG makes eggNOG-mapper meet KEGG-Decoder! It parses eggNOG-mapper output, make it fit for the input to KEGG-Decoder and then visualize KEGG Pathways as the heatmap!
• Pro-tip: eggNOG-mapper and KEGGaNOG could be wrapped into 🐍 Snakemake pipeline making metabolic profiling a "one-click" process!

Installation

# Linux / WSL / macOS
conda create -n kegganog pip -y
conda activate kegganog
pip install kegganog

Usage Guide

Command-line mode

Usage: KEGGaNOG [OPTIONS]                                                      
                                                                                
 KEGGaNOG: Link eggNOG-mapper and KEGG-Decoder for pathway visualization.       
                                                                                
╭─ Options ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --input      -i         TEXT                    Path to eggNOG-mapper annotation file. │
│ --output     -o         TEXT                    Output folder to saveresults.          │
│ --multi      -M                                 Run KEGGaNOG in multi-sample cohort    │
│                                                 profile mode.                          │
│ --overwrite  -overwrite                         Overwrite the output directory if it   │
│                                                 already exists.                        │
│ --dpi        -dpi       INTEGER                 DPI resolution mapping index for the   │
│                                                 output image visualization.            │
│                                                 [default: 300]                         │
│ --color      -c         [Blues|Greens|Reds|     Target seaborn color map palette       │
│                         Purples|Greys|Oranges]  matrix rule.                           │
│                                                 [default: Blues]                       │
│ --name       -n         TEXT                    Sample identity text string for        │
│                                                 axis labeling.                         │
│                                                 [default: SAMPLE]                      │
│ --group      -g                                 Group the pathway matrix heatmap rows  │
│                                                 based on predefined functional         │
│                                                 categories.                            │
│ --web                                           Launch the interactive local web UI    │
│                                                 dashboard at http://localhost:8000.    │
│ --version    -V                                 Show version and exit.                 │
│ --help       -h                                 Show this message and exit.            │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

🔗 Please visit KEGGaNOG wiki page

Web interface mode

For an interactive, browser-based experience with live preview and advanced visualization options:

KEGGaNOG --web

Then open http://localhost:8000 in your browser.

Features:

• Live preview — visualize plots in real-time as you adjust parameters
• Interactive settings — no command-line arguments needed; drop files, tweak colors and dimensions through an intuitive UI
• Multi-sample analysis — compare samples using heatmaps, radarplots, correlation networks, stacked bars, and streamgraphs
• Re-render on the fly — modify plot parameters without re-running the full analysis (multi mode only)
• Download results — export individual plots or the complete results ZIP

Output examples gallery

Default visualization

Single mode	Multi mode

These figures are generated using functional groupping mode (-g/--group) and Greens colormap

User APIs visualization

Barplot	Boxplot	Radarplot	Correlation Network

Stacked Barplot	Streamgraph	Stacked Barplot + Streamgraph

Advantages

1. Seemless Access to KEGG Annotations: Provides KEGG Ortholog (KO) annotations without requiring a KEGG license.
2. High-Throughput Capability: Optimized for rapid KO assignment in large-scale datasets, ideal for metagenomics and genomics projects.
3. Broad Functional Coverage: Leverages the extensive eggNOG database to annotate genes across a wide range of taxa.

Limitation

1. Indirect KO Mapping: eggNOG-mapper doesn’t directly use the KEGG database, its KO term assignments are inferred through orthologous groups (eggNOG entries). This can sometimes result in less precise annotations.

Tool name background

KEGGaNOG stands for “KEGG out of NOG”, highlighting its purpose: extracting KEGG Ortholog annotations from eggNOG’s Non-supervised Orthologous Groups.

Citation

If you use KEGGaNOG in your research, please cite:

Popov, I.V., Chikindas, M.L., Venema, K., Ermakov, A.M. and Popov, I.V., 2025. KEGGaNOG: A Lightweight Tool for KEGG Module Profiling From Orthology-Based Annotations. Molecular Nutrition & Food Research, p.e70269. doi.org/10.1002/mnfr.70269

Acknowledgements

For now KEGGaNOG uses KEGG-Decoder as a main dependecy. I greatly thank KEGG-Decoder's developers.