enrichr-api

Enrichr Gene Set Enrichment Analysis API

Overview

Enrichr is the most widely used gene set enrichment analysis tool, developed by the Ma'ayan Lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. It tests whether a user-supplied gene list is statistically over-represented in curated gene set libraries spanning pathways, ontologies, transcription factor targets, disease associations, and cell types. The API provides access to 225 background libraries covering over 500,000 annotated gene sets. Free, no authentication required.

Two-Step Workflow

Enrichr uses a submit-then-query pattern:

1. POST gene list to /addList -- returns a userListId token
2. GET enrichment from /enrich using that token and a chosen library

The userListId persists on the server, so you can run multiple library queries against the same submission without re-uploading.

Core Endpoints

Base URL

https://maayanlab.cloud/Enrichr

Step 1: Submit Gene List

curl -X POST "https://maayanlab.cloud/Enrichr/addList" \
  -F "list=BRCA1
BRCA2
TP53
EGFR
MYC
PTEN
AKT1
KRAS
PIK3CA
RAF1" \
  -F "description=cancer_genes"

Response:

{
  "shortId": "8619200cc78f1513ff1029a04af90ad7",
  "userListId": 124544426
}

Genes are newline-separated. The request must use multipart/form-data (the -F flag), not application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

Step 2: Retrieve Enrichment Results

curl "https://maayanlab.cloud/Enrichr/enrich?userListId=124544426&backgroundType=KEGG_2021_Human"

Response (first 3 of 143 results):

{
  "KEGG_2021_Human": [
    [1, "Breast cancer", 3.37e-22, 198530.0, 9815800.25,
     ["PIK3CA","MYC","PTEN","AKT1","KRAS","BRCA1","BRCA2","RAF1","TP53","EGFR"],
     4.82e-20, 0, 0],
    [2, "Endometrial cancer", 1.35e-19, 1595.2, 69306.12,
     ["PIK3CA","MYC","PTEN","AKT1","KRAS","RAF1","TP53","EGFR"],
     9.68e-18, 0, 0],
    [3, "Central carbon metabolism in cancer", 6.66e-19, 1285.68, 53809.88,
     ["PIK3CA","MYC","PTEN","AKT1","KRAS","RAF1","TP53","EGFR"],
     3.17e-17, 0, 0]
  ]
}