Visualization of Genomic Sequence Graphs

Recent scientific advances have lead to a huge increase in the amount of available genomic sequence information. In the past this sequence information consisted of a single reference sequence, which can be relatively easily visualised in a linear way. Today we often know multiple variants of a particular DNA sequence. The differences between the individual sequences are called polymorphisms and can range in size from variations of a single base pair (single nucleotide polymorphism = SNP) to variations involving long stretches of DNA.

There are a number of approaches (and file formats) for formally encoding variants of genomic sequences and their relationships in the form of graphs. Unfortunately it is often difficult to visualise these graphs in a way which conveys the complex information yet is intuitively easy to understand. The goal of this project is to help in the visualisation of genomic sequences and their variations by providing a JavaScript module which generates visual representations of genomic sequence graphs. This module aims to display the information about all sequence variants in a single visualisation as elegantly as possible.