GeneTerrain is a next-generation panel biomarker discovery and validation software.
It is built on the visual metaphor of 3-D visualization of gene/protein expression data, laid out carefully on a cartography of molecular interaction network specific to a biological process.
It is a research visual analytic platform that are currently still in research prototyping stage. The software is free to use by the public. It is copyright protected by the Discovery Informatics and Computing Group at Indiana University.
Description of GeneTerrain Visualization
GeneTerrain is a new network visualization technique using scattered data interpolation and surface rendering, based upon a foundation layout of a scalar field. Contours of the interpolated surfaces are generated to support multi-scale visual interaction for data exploration.
The GeneTerrain framework visualizes quantitative attributes of nodes in a network as a continuous surface by interpolating the scalar field, therefore avoiding scalability issues typical in conventional network visualizations while also maintaining the topological properties of the original network.
GeneTerrain has been applied to the study of a bio-molecular interaction network integrated with gene expression data for Alzheimer's Disease (AD). In this application, differential gene expression profiles obtained from the human brain are rendered for AD patients with differing degrees of severity and compared to healthy individuals. This visualization technique is effective in revealing several types of molecular biomarkers, which are traditionally difficult to detect due to 'noises' in data derived from DNA microarray experiments.
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The software is still under development as beta software
for experienced bioinformatics researcher only. Please join the mailing group to obtain instructions for downloading a pre-release version of the software.
