BirdsEyeView (BEV): graphical overviews of experimental data

BMC Bioinformatics. 2012;13 Suppl 15(Suppl 15):S11. doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-13-S15-S11. Epub 2012 Sep 11.

Abstract

Background: Analyzing global experimental data can be tedious and time-consuming. Thus, helping biologists see results as quickly and easily as possible can facilitate biological research, and is the purpose of the software we describe.

Results: We present BirdsEyeView, a software system for visualizing experimental transcriptomic data using different views that users can switch among and compare. BirdsEyeView graphically maps data to three views: Cellular Map (currently a plant cell), Pathway Tree with dynamic mapping, and Gene Ontology http://www.geneontology.org Biological Processes and Molecular Functions. By displaying color-coded values for transcript levels across different views, BirdsEyeView can assist users in developing hypotheses about their experiment results.

Conclusions: BirdsEyeView is a software system available as a Java Webstart package for visualizing transcriptomic data in the context of different biological views to assist biologists in investigating experimental results. BirdsEyeView can be obtained from http://metnetdb.org/MetNet_BirdsEyeView.htm.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Computational Biology / methods
  • Computer Graphics*
  • Databases, Genetic
  • Gene Expression Profiling / methods*
  • Genomics / methods
  • Metabolic Networks and Pathways
  • Software*
  • Transcriptome
  • User-Computer Interface