Visualizing the Similarity of Human and Chimp DNA

On a second thought, it seems it could be used for 3D shapes in genetic algorithms, with each English letter representing one neighboring voxel. If it hods true that similar DNA results in a similar shape, it could work very well.

Seems like there are much more intuitive ways to show these differences, something like the plot on Dr. Moran's blog:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2012/01/whats-difference-betwee...

Although the 3D plots are neat, they kind of feel like 3D barcharts: they add very little over a more straightforward representation (like a heatmap instead).

Gave it a shot in HTLM5/WebGL. Check it out:

http://grondilu.github.io/dna.html

Can someone clarify this for me? From watching their video, it seems like all they've done is build a tool that visualizes DNA? I don't understand how the tool assists with visual differences in DNA. I expected maybe a single DNA sequence in one color with the differences highlighted in a contrasting color. Maybe the video just didn't do a good job of explaining things.

It doesnt seem like a lot of thought has gone into making the colour / drawing choice actually visually significant. Eg. given blue is much harder to see here than red, are we over-estimating similarity because there is a lot of red?

I suspect they need to talk to some visualization & human vision people to make this compelling.

Neat idea. Someone needs to implement that in HTLM5/Webgl.

Couldn't resist trying something similar with 2D canvas:

https://output.jsbin.com/zorepe

It will definitely look better in genuine 3D, but that's a bit more painful. Totally doable, though.

The page was last modified on 27th June 2011, as displayed by Firefox page info dialog.

There might be more recent approaches like the one mentioned by aaronmck which is from 2012.

Sorry for a bit off topic coment, but it made me realize that Gattaca consists only of DNA "letters".