Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Seeing Genomes
Chapter 5 showed how biological objects are organized
inside computers. But it is no more possible to observe
data in a database directly than it is to observe molecules
inside a cell directly. So how are data objects actually rep-
resented and manipulated by biologists in their work? All
the examples in this chapter will show what biologists
actually do while sitting in front of their computers: they
manipulate visual representations of biological objects.
These representations act to generate new and often un-
expected relationships between biological objects that are
crucial in the making of bioinformatic knowledge.
In this chapter we will follow the data out of data-
bases and into the visual realm. 1 Visualizations are not
produced as the end results of biological work, or as after-
thoughts prepared for publication or for presentations,
but rather form an integral part of how computational
biologists think about their own work and communicate
it to their collaborators. Arranging data into images forms
a crucial part of knowledge production in contemporary
biology—it is often through visualizations that data are
made into knowledge. A large part of bioinformatics is
about solving problems of representation. Like the struc-
ture of databases, the choice of visual representations has
a determinative effect on the knowledge and objects pro-
duced through them. Computational representations of
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