
Visualizing the Similarity of Human and Chimp DNA - tomkat0789
http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/DNA/
======
PepeGomez
On a second thought, it seems it could be used for 3D shapes in genetic
algorithms, with each English letter representing one neighboring voxel. If it
hods true that similar DNA results in a similar shape, it could work very
well.

------
aaronmck
Seems like there are much more intuitive ways to show these differences,
something like the plot on Dr. Moran's blog:

[http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2012/01/whats-difference-
betwee...](http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2012/01/whats-difference-between-
human-and.html)

Although the 3D plots are neat, they kind of feel like 3D barcharts: they add
very little over a more straightforward representation (like a heatmap
instead).

------
grondilu
Gave it a shot in HTLM5/WebGL. Check it out:

[http://grondilu.github.io/dna.html](http://grondilu.github.io/dna.html)

------
learning_still
Can someone clarify this for me? From watching their video, it seems like all
they've done is build a tool that visualizes DNA? I don't understand how the
tool assists with visual differences in DNA. I expected maybe a single DNA
sequence in one color with the differences highlighted in a contrasting color.
Maybe the video just didn't do a good job of explaining things.

------
mjburgess
It doesnt seem like a lot of thought has gone into making the colour / drawing
choice actually visually significant. Eg. given blue is much harder to see
here than red, are we over-estimating similarity because there is a lot of
red?

I suspect they need to talk to some visualization & human vision people to
make this compelling.

~~~
pvinis
Like Pepe said below, each letter spawns in a specific diredtion, so A, or
red, always goes up, and you can check that in the beginning, where there are
only few lines. so the final shape is more important than color. the color is
basically irrelevant, except for the fact that maybe you can see which of A,
C, G, T appears more times in that dna sequence.

------
grondilu
Neat idea. Someone needs to implement that in HTLM5/Webgl.

Couldn't resist trying something similar with 2D canvas:

[https://output.jsbin.com/zorepe](https://output.jsbin.com/zorepe)

It will definitely look better in genuine 3D, but that's a bit more painful.
Totally doable, though.

------
AlbertoGP
The page was last modified on 27th June 2011, as displayed by Firefox page
info dialog.

There might be more recent approaches like the one mentioned by aaronmck which
is from 2012.

------
PepeGomez
Sorry for a bit off topic coment, but it made me realize that Gattaca consists
only of DNA "letters".

