Phinch: An interactive, exploratory data visualization framework for metagenomic datasets

Poster presented at VIZBI 2014 (Heidelberg, Germany, 5-7 March 2014)

Abstract:

The sheer volume of data produced from environmental sequencing approaches (rRNA marker genes, metagenomes) requires fundamentally different approaches and new paradigms for effective data analysis. Scientific visualization represents an innovative method towards tackling current bottlenecks; in addition to giving researchers a unique approach for exploring large datasets, it stands to empower biologists with the ability to conduct powerful analyses without requiring a deep level of computational knowledge. Here we present Phinch, an interactive, browser-based visualization framework that can be used to explore and analyze biological patterns in high-throughput environmental datasets. Leveraging a close collaboration between UC Davis and Pitch Interactive (a data visualization studio in Berkeley, CA), this project takes advantage of standard file formats from computational pipelines in order to bridge the gap between biological software (e.g. QIIME) and existing data visualization capabilities (harnessing the flexibility and scalability of WebGL and HTML5, and visualization-specific programming language such as Processing and D3).