Software for the interactive visualisation of experimental data in the genomic context

Abstract

Genomic datasets are all tied to the genome, which is an effective scaffold for data integration. Researchers have turned to interactive genome browsers to explore and understand the genomic relationships in their data. This paper describes and evaluates the existing genome browsers and compares them in terms of their visualisation features, with emphasis on experimental data plotting, interactivity and integration with broader data analysis environments. We find that while there are trends in genome browser development toward better support for experimental data analysis, there remains much potential for improvement.