Visualizing Gene - Interactions within the Rice and Maize Network

The purpose of this research was to design a simpler visualization tool for comparing or viewing gene interaction graphs in systems biology. This visualization tool makes it possible and easier for a researcher to visualize the biological metadata of a plant and interact with the graph on a webpage. Currently available visualization software like Cytoscape and Walrus are difficult to interact with and do not scale effectively for large data sets, limiting the ability to visualize interactions within a biological system.

The visualization tool developed is useful for viewing and interpreting the dataset of a gene interaction network. The graph layout drawn by this visualization tool is an improvement from the previous method of comparing lines of genes in two separate data files to, now having the ability to visually see the layout of the gene networks and how the two systems are related.

The graph layout presented by the visualization tool draws a graph of the sample rice and maize gene networks, linking the common genes found in both plants and highlighting the functions served by common genes from each plant. The success of this visualization tool will enable Dr. Feltus to continue his investigations and draw conclusions on the biological evolution of the sorghum plant as well.

REU Funded by NSF ACI Award 1359223 Vetria L. Byrd, PI