BrowserGenome.org – web-based RNA-Seq data analysis and visualization

Applications of deep-sequencing technologies in life science research and clinical diagnostics are rapidly expanding. Although fast data-processing algorithms exist, intuitive, portable data-evaluation solutions are still needed. Web tools have a history in bioinformatics of providing platform-independent, intuitive, barrier-free software solutions. Whereas in most scientific web tools a server performs intense calculations, the new HTML5 standard and the competition between web browser platforms have recently opened access to computational resources for web apps. However, so far web apps have been used only to visualize existing genome annotations or alignment data.

Here, researchers from the University of Bonn describe BrowserGenome a web-based deep-sequencing data-analysis platform offering barcode deconvolution, read mapping, real-time data visualization, transcript-count analysis and data normalization. BrowserGenome is specifically focused on the eva,luation of mRNA-seq data, but it can easily be extended to other applications. BrowserGenome matches the speed and memory footprint of state-of-the-art software while being visually driven and intuitive to use.

The circular representation of the genome can be intuitively moved and zoomed with mouse or track pad gestures. Up to six tracks of deep-sequencing data can be displayed as concentric circles, and even large data sets can be visualized in real time.

Availability – http://www.BrowserGenome.org