VISUALIZING BIOLOGICAL DATA VIZBI

The videos from the second VIZBI 2013 session focusing on visualisation of transcript data are now available at http://vizbi.org/videos. The first talk by Paul Gardner is focusing on the challenges of visualising RNA structures and alignments with particular emphasis on Rfam database, a collection of non-coding RNAs, structured cis-regulatory elements and self-splicing RNAs. The topic or data reliability and co-relation of anti-sense RNA sequences is then discussed by Gisela Storz. She demonstrates that RNA-seq data across different experiments and from various sources can often be riddled with discrepancies and lack of overlap. She argues that, while the majority of RNA-seq data is robust and reliable, low abundance transcripts can be difficult to account for and the variations in experimental as well as computational conditions can lead to vastly different data. In the final talk of the session, Cole Trapnell talks about isoform-resolution analysis of RNA-seq. RNA-seq is an assay used to determine the abundance of RNA transcripts in a transcriptome, the results of which can be used for gene discovery and expression analysis. Cole highlights the inherent challenges associated with the analysis of isoform-resolution data and proposes several different areas that are open for improvement.