Visual data mining of genomic databases by immersive graph-based exploration

Abstract

Biologists are leading current research on genome characterization (sequencing, alignment, transcription), providing a huge quantity of raw data about many genome organisms. Extracting knowledge from this raw data is an important process for biologists, using usually data mining approaches. However, it is difficult to deals with these genomic information using actual bioinformatics data mining tools, because data are heterogeneous, huge in quantity and geographically distributed. In this paper, we present a new approach between data mining and virtual reality visualization, called visual data mining. Indeed Virtual Reality becomes ripe, with efficient display devices and intuitive interaction in an immersive context. Moreover, biologists use to work with 3D representation of their molecules, but in a desktop context. We present a software solution, Genome3DExplorer, which addresses the problem of genomic data visualization, of scene management and interaction. This solution is based on a well-adapted graphical and interaction paradigm, where local and global topological characteristics of data are easily visible, on the contrary to traditional genomic database browsers, always focused on the zoom and details level.