BARD: A visualization tool for biological sequence analysis

We present BARD (biological arc diagrams), a visualization tool for biological sequence analysis. The development of BARD began with the application of Wattenberg’s arc diagrams [Wattenberg 2002] to results from sequence analysis programs, such as BLAST [Altschul et al 1990]. In this paper, we extend the initial arc diagram concept in two ways: 1) by separating the visualization method from the underlying matching algorithm and 2) by expanding the types of matches to include inexact matches, complemented palindrome matches, and inter-sequence matches. BARD renders each type of match distinctly, resulting in a powerful tool to quickly understand sequence similarities and differences. We illustrate the power of BARD by applying the technique to a comparative sequence analysis of the human pathogenic fungi Cryptococcus neoformans.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: INFOVIS
• Authors: Rhazes Spell, Rachael Brady, Fred Dietrich
• Keywords: Arc Diagram, BARD, INFOVIS 2003, Sequence Analysis