Next-Generation Clustered Heatmaps for Interactive Exploration of Molecular Profiling Data

Clustered heatmaps are the most frequently used graphics for visualization of molecular profiling data in biology. However, they are generally rendered as static, or only modestly interactive, images. Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have now used recent advances in web technologies to produce interactive “next-generation” clustered heatmaps (NG-CHM) that enable extreme zooming and navigation without loss of resolution. NG-CHMs also provide link-outs to additional information sources and include other features that facilitate deep exploration of the biology behind the image. Here, the researchers describe an implementation of the NG-CHM system in the Galaxy bioinformatics platform. They illustrate the algorithm and available computational tool using RNA-seq data from The Cancer Genome Atlas program’s Kidney Clear Cell Carcinoma project.

The NG-CHM Heat Map Viewer is a dynamic, graphical environment for exploration of clustered or non-clustered heat map data in a web browser. http://bioinformatics.mdanderson.org/main/NG-CHM-V2:Overview