Grammar-Based Interactive Visualization of Genomics Data
1. Grammar-Based
Interactive Visualization of
Genomics Data
Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Sehi L’Yi Qianwen Wang Fritz Lekschas Nils Gehlenborg
23. ClinVar Track
Transcript Track
HiGlass Plugin Tracks
. . .
Sequence Track
~1,000 Lines of Code
Pixi.js, JavaScript
SequenceTrack.js
DEVELOPING NEW VISUALIZATION IN HIGLASS
24. Vega
Vega-Lite
Pixi.js
ggPlot2
Tableau
Lyra
Spotfire
MS Power BI
MS Excel
Google Charts
D3.js
General-Purpose
Genomic-Specific
Circos
ggBio
GenomeSpy
MizBee CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
Circos
GenomeSpy
ggBio
MizBee
CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
Less Expressive More Expressive
DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS
25. Vega
Vega-Lite
Pixi.js
ggPlot2
Tableau
Lyra
Spotfire
MS Power BI
MS Excel
Google Charts
D3.js
General-Purpose
Genomic-Specific
Circos
ggBio
GenomeSpy
MizBee CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
Circos
GenomeSpy
ggBio
MizBee CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
Less Expressive More Expressive
Vega
Vega-Lite
Pixi.js
ggPlot2
Tableau
Lyra
Spotfire
MS Power BI
MS Excel
Google Charts
D3.js
General-Purpose
Genomic-Specific
DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS
26. Less Expressive More Expressive
Vega
Vega-Lite
Pixi.js
ggPlot2
Tableau
Lyra
Spotfire
MS Power BI
MS Excel
Google Charts
D3.js
General-Purpose
Genomic-Specific
Circos
ggBio
GenomeSpy
MizBee CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
Low-Level Libraries
DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS
27. Less Expressive More Expressive
Vega
Vega-Lite
Pixi.js
ggPlot2
Tableau
Lyra
Spotfire
MS Power BI
MS Excel
Google Charts
D3.js
General-Purpose
Genomic-Specific
Circos
ggBio
GenomeSpy
MizBee CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
High-Level
Grammars, Libraries, and Tools
DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS
28. Vega
Vega-Lite
Pixi.js
ggPlot2
Tableau
Lyra
Spotfire
MS Power BI
MS Excel
Google Charts
D3.js
GenomeSpy
MizBee CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
Circos
ggBio
General-Purpose
Genomic-Specific
Less Expressive More Expressive
• Static visualizations only
DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS
29. Circos
ggBio
Pixi.js
Tableau
Spotfire
MS Power BI
MS Excel
Google Charts
D3.js
MizBee CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
General-Purpose
Genomic-Specific
Less Expressive More Expressive
Vega
Vega-Lite
ggPlot2
Lyra
GenomeSpy
• Based on general data formats (e.g., CSV)
• Limited scalability for large genomics datasets
Circos Krzywinski et al.
• Limited support of radial visualizations
DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS
30. Less Expressive More Expressive
Vega
Vega-Lite
Pixi.js
ggPlot2
Tableau
Lyra
Spotfire
MS Power BI
MS Excel
Google Charts
D3.js
General-Purpose
Genomic-Specific
Circos
ggBio
GenomeSpy
MizBee CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS
31. Gosling.js
Less Expressive More Expressive
Vega
Vega-Lite
Pixi.js
ggPlot2
Tableau
Lyra
Spotfire
MS Power BI
MS Excel
Google Charts
D3.js
General-Purpose
Genomic-Specific
Circos
ggBio
GenomeSpy
MizBee CNVkit
Gremlin
HiGlass
IGV
EpiViz
UCSC GB
JBrowse
WashU GB
GIVE
WebLogo
DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS
33. Multi-Scale Multi-Focus Multi-Modality
Large Data Size
Large Design Space
GOSLING’S APPROACHES
Grammar of Graphics
Wilkinson et al. 2012
Taxonomy of Genomics Visualizations
Nusrat et al. 2019
Coordinated Interactions
Zoom & Pan, Brushing, Linking
Semantic Zoom
Perlin and Fox 1993
HiGlass Infrastructure
Kerpedjiev et al. 2017