BIOINFORMATICS x VIS-O-BAC: Exploratory visualization of func- tional genome studies from bacteria

Summary: The visualization-aided exploration of complex data sets will allow the research community to formulate novel functional hy-potheses leading to a better understanding of biological processes at all levels. Therefore we have developed a web resource termed VIS-O-BAC designed for the functional investigation of expression data for model systems such as bacterial pathogens based on a graphical display. Genome-scale datasets derived from typical “omic ” approaches can directly be explored with regard to three biologically relevant aspects, the genome structure (operon organi-zation), the organization of genes in pathways (KEGG) and the gene function with GO terms. The integrated viewers can be used in par-allel and combine expression data and functional annotations from different external data repositories. The graphical visualizations evidently accelerate both the validation of regulatory information and the detection of affected biological processes