1. Heatmaps: Exploring Patterns in High-Dimensional Data

Heatmaps are a go-to visualization for representing high-dimensional datasets, such as gene expression or metabolomics data. They use color gradients to display data intensity, making patterns and clusters easily detectable.

• Applications: Gene expression analysis, pathway enrichment, methylation studies.

• Tools: Seaborn (Python), ComplexHeatmap (R), Morpheus (web-based).

Tip: Add dendrograms to visualize clustering of rows and columns for hierarchical relationships.

2. Volcano Plots: Highlighting Differential Features

Volcano plots are indispensable for identifying significantly differentially expressed genes or proteins. They plot the log2 fold change against –log10(p-value), making it easy to spot statistically significant changes.

• Applications: RNA-seq, proteomics, and metabolomics.

• Tools: ggplot2 (R), EnhancedVolcano (R), Plotly (Python).

Tip: Use color to highlight significant features and label key genes or proteins.

3. PCA Plots: Reducing Complexity with Principal Component Analysis

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) plots are used to reduce dimensionality and uncover trends or clusters in data. They provide insights into sample variability and grouping.

• Applications: Transcriptomics, metabolomics, microbiome studies.

• Tools: scikit-learn + Matplotlib (Python), prcomp (R), ClustVis (web-based).

Tip: Annotate clusters with metadata to enhance interpretability.

4. Manhattan Plots: Genome-Wide Association Studies

Manhattan plots visualize p-values across the genome, making it easy to identify significant associations in genome-wide studies. They resemble city skylines, with the highest peaks indicating loci of interest.

• Applications: GWAS, QTL mapping.

• Tools: qqman (R), Matplotlib (Python).

Tip: Use alternating colors for chromosomes and highlight significant SNPs for clarity.

5. Circular Plots (Circos): Visualizing Genomic Relationships

Circular plots are ideal for visualizing relationships across the genome, such as structural variations, gene duplications, or synteny.

• Applications: Comparative genomics, structural variation studies.

• Tools: Circos (standalone), Rcircos (R), pyCircos (Python).

Tip: Keep the plot clean and avoid overcrowding to maintain readability.

6. Sankey Diagrams: Tracking Data Flows

Sankey diagrams visualize flows or relationships between categories, often used to track changes in gene expression or pathway enrichment across conditions.

• Applications: Pathway analysis, gene set enrichment analysis.

• Tools: Plotly (Python), networkD3 (R).

Tip: Use gradients or distinct colors to highlight key transitions.

7. Network Graphs: Mapping Interactions

Network graphs represent relationships between entities, such as protein-protein interactions or gene regulatory networks. Nodes represent entities, and edges represent relationships.

• Applications: Systems biology, interactomics.

• Tools: Cytoscape (standalone), igraph (R), NetworkX (Python).

Tip: Use edge thickness or node size to represent interaction strength or centrality.

8. Violin Plots: Visualizing Data Distribution

Violin plots combine a boxplot with a density plot, showing the distribution and variability of data.

• Applications: Single-cell RNA-seq, quantitative trait analysis.

• Tools: Seaborn (Python), ggplot2 (R).

Tip: Split violins by groups for side-by-side comparisons.

9. Time-Series Plots: Monitoring Changes Over Time

Time-series plots display changes in variables across time points, useful for tracking gene expression dynamics or metabolic fluxes.

• Applications: Time-course experiments, cell cycle studies.

• Tools: Matplotlib (Python), ggplot2 (R).

Tip: Smooth the data to highlight trends while avoiding overfitting.

10. Genome Tracks: Visualizing Genomic Features

Genome tracks display multiple layers of genomic data, such as gene annotations, sequencing coverage, and epigenetic marks.

• Applications: ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, whole-genome sequencing.

• Tools: IGV (standalone), pyGenomeTracks (Python).

Tip: Stack related tracks for direct comparisons.

11. UpSet Plots: Visualizing Set Intersections

UpSet plots are a powerful alternative to Venn diagrams for visualizing intersections between multiple datasets.

• Applications: Overlap analysis for gene sets, pathways, or variants.

• Tools: UpSetR (R), ComplexUpset (Python).

Tip: Use bar plots to represent the size of each intersection for added clarity.

12. Ridge Plots: Comparing Distributions

Ridge plots visualize the distributions of multiple datasets, stacked for easy comparison.

• Applications: Transcriptomics, single-cell RNA-seq.

• Tools: ggridges (R), Matplotlib (Python).

Tip: Use transparency and consistent scaling for better readability.

13. Chord Diagrams: Visualizing Connections Between Groups

Chord diagrams illustrate relationships between categories, such as shared genes between pathways or overlaps in regulatory elements.

• Applications: Pathway overlap, synteny, co-expression networks.

• Tools: Circlize (R), Holoviews (Python).

Tip: Use distinct colors for each group to emphasize relationships.

14. Treemaps: Hierarchical Data Representation

Treemaps visualize hierarchical data as nested rectangles, with area proportional to data size.

• Applications: Ontology enrichment, pathway analysis.

• Tools: Treemapify (R), Plotly (Python).

Tip: Use colors to represent additional variables, like significance or enrichment scores.

15. T-SNE/UMAP Plots: Dimensionality Reduction for Clustering

T-SNE and UMAP plots are great for visualizing high-dimensional data in two dimensions while preserving local or global structure.

• Applications: Single-cell transcriptomics, clustering analyses.

• Tools: scikit-learn (Python), Seurat (R).

Tip: Combine with metadata annotations for better cluster interpretation.

Bringing It All Together

The choice of visualization can significantly impact the insights gained from bioinformatics data. By selecting plots tailored to your data type and analysis goals, you can effectively communicate your findings and make your research more impactful. Whether you’re a seasoned bioinformatician or a beginner, mastering these visualizations will elevate your analyses and presentations.

Webpage : https://www.scilifelab.se/about-us/
Opportunity: https://www.scilifelab.se/about-us/career/

The manual translation of many, frequently rather complex SPSS scripts often presents itself as a tedious and error-prone task, and represents a rather large obstacle for many analysts and companies to migrate to a modern, open source data management and analysis tool like R. With translate2R this hurdle will be diminished substantially.

Find at https://service.eoda.de/translater/?lang=en

Pine Biotech, Inc., a US-based startup working with the Tauber Bioinformatics Research Center is offering a full curriculum online preparing students without any technical background for real-life challenges with large scale biomedical data. Workshops on processing, analysis and biomedical interpretation of Next Generation Sequencing data cover important up-to-date algorithms and machine learning approaches. The most important thing is that there are virtually no pre-requisites such as coding, biostatistics or advanced medical skills. If you know what gene is and how the genes are expressed, you are ready to take the courses or join our workshops. Learn more: https://edu.t-bio.info/workshops/

In comparative genome analysis work, we usually compare more than two genomes and looks for syntenic regions amongst them. In my research I used Evolution Highway (RH) http://eh-demo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/, which is a collaborative project designed to provide a visual means for simultaneously comparing genomes of multiple amniote species. The tool removes the burden of manually aligning these maps and allows cognitive skills to be used toward something more valuable than preparation and transformation of data. In addition to EH, attractive Circos (http://circos.ca/) is also very popular for this kind of analysis.

The EH is available online, and can be easily access and use, whereas Circos installation is not entirely straightforward. One of the most difficult parts of the installation involves installing the GD library. Since there weren't good instructions for installing this library on the internet I decided to post instructions here in case they are useful to anyone else.

Following are the steps to install GD modules in Mac OS

1. Setup

Create a folder for the files:

$ mkdir -p /SourceCache
$ cd /SourceCache

Get and unpack the required Jpeg-6b and GD libraries:
Download Jpeg-6b (http://code.google.com/p/google-desktop-for-linux-mirror/downloads/detail?name=jpeg-6b.tar.gz&can=2&q)
Download GD (http://search.cpan.org/~lds/GD-2.46/)

Place the "tar.gz" files in "/SourceCache" and double click to unpack.

2. Install libjpeg

Copy the "config.sub" and "config.guess" files to "/SourceCache". Note that your "config.sub" and ""config.guess" files may be in a slightly different location. The commands below show where they were on my machine:

$ cd /SourceCache/jpeg-6b/src
$ cp /usr/share/libtool/config/config.sub .
$ cp /usr/share/libtool/config/config.guess .

Configure libjpeg as follows. Note that this was installed on a 64 bit machine. However, this method may configure it in a 32 bit format. This may not be the best way to configure the installation but it works.

$ .configure --enable-shared
$ make

Check to see if the following directories exist on your machine. Create the missing directories in the following manner:

$ mkdir -p /usr/local/include
$ mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
$ mkdir -p /usr/local/lib
$ mkdir -p /usr/local/man/man1

Finish making and installing libjpeg:

$ make install

3. Install GD

$ cd /SourceCache/GD-2.46/GD/
$ perl Makefile.PL
$ make
$ make test (optional)
$ make html (optional)
$ make install

Other way for Mac OS
The easiest way to get a lot of these is with a program called Fink, which is similar in nature to the CPAN installer, but installs common GNU utilities. Fink is available from <http://sourceforge.net/projects/fink/>.

Follow the instructions for setting up Fink. Once it's installed, you'll want to run the following as root: fink install gd

It will prompt you for a number of dependencies, type 'y' and hit enter to install all of the dependencies. Then watch it work.

To prevent creating conflicts with the software that Apple installs by default, Fink creates its own directory tree at /sw where it installs most of the software that it installs. This means your libraries and headers for libgd will be at /sw/lib and /sw/include instead of /usr/lib and /usr/local/include. Because of these changed locations for the libraries, the Perl GD module will not install directly via CPAN, because it looks for the specific paths instead of getting them from your environment. But there's a way around that :-)

Instead of typing "install GD" at the cpan> prompt, type look GD. This should go through the motions of downloading the latest version of the GD module, then it will open a shell and drop you into the build directory. Apply below patch to the Makefile.PL file (save the patch into a file and use the command patch < patchfile.)

Then, run these commands to finish the installation of the GD module:

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
And don't forget to run exit to get back to CPAN.

Install on MS Window, using PPM

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner>ppm
PPM interactive shell (2.2.0) - type 'help' for available commands.
PPM> install GD
Install package 'GD?' (y/N): y
Installing package 'GD'...
Downloading http://ppm.ActiveState.com/PPMPackages/5.6plus/MSW. ...
Installing C:\Perl\site\lib\auto\GD\GD.bs
Installing C:\Perl\site\lib\auto\GD\GD.dll
Installing C:\Perl\site\lib\auto\GD\GD.exp
Installing C:\Perl\site\lib\auto\GD\GD.lib
Installing C:\Perl\html\site\lib\GD.html
Installing C:\Perl\site\lib\GD.pm
Installing C:\Perl\site\lib\qd.pl
Installing C:\Perl\site\lib\auto\GD\autosplit.ix
PPM>


If you can't install it from ppm. You can download it:
http://ppm.ActiveState.com/PPMPackages/5.6plus/MSW.


BTW,All Perl 5.6.1 Modules are located at:

http://ppm.ActiveState.com/PPMPackages/5.6plus/MSW.

Install the Perl GD Module on Linux

$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e shell

Since it was the first time I had run this command on this particular machine I had to answer a lot of questions but simply selected the defaults for everything as this usually works for me. Once in the CPAN shell I entered

$ install Bundle::CPAN

and selected all of the defaults again. Once the CPAN bundle had finished installing I tried to install GD::Graph by typing

$ install GD::Graph

but it failed with hundreds of errors – the first of which was

GD.xs:7:16: error: gd.h: No such file or directory

This was fixed with the following apt-get command (in the bash shell)

$ sudo apt-get install libgd2-xpm-dev

back in the CPAN shell I still couldn’t get GD::Graph to build and I guessed this was because of some left over files from the failed build. I don’t know the command to clean things up inside the CPAN shell and am too lazy to read the docs so I simply went into the .cpan/build directory in my home directory and deleted anything that started with GD – eg

$ rm -rf GD-2.35-HC_vkB

$ rm -rf GDGraph-1.44-Evfibe

and so on. Those strings at the end (VkB and so on) look random so they might be different on your machine. Then I went back into the CPAN shell and ran

$ install GD::Graph

There were a few dependencies which the script fetched and installed for me but everything worked smoothly.

Manual and other Perl Module instalation are mentioned in my previous blog @ http://bioinformaticsonline.com/blog/view/710/how-to-install-perl-modules-manually-using-cpan-command-and-other-quick-ways

http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/bioinformatics/overview.html?Fsize=0%2C%20%40%2F%27

Kelso Group
Department of Evolutionary Genetics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
Germany
Phone: +49 341 3550 500

Job:
http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/bioinformatics/jobs.html?Fsize=0%2C%2B%40

Address of the bookmark: http://www.citrusperl.com/

To run:

perl centro.pl

http://search.cpan.org/~lds/Bio-Graphics-2.37/

Address of the bookmark: http://search.cpan.org/~lds/Bio-Graphics-2.37/