2008 Publication

The "postgenomic era" in biology may be hard to define, and when it actually began is subject to debate. But its most characteristic feature is clearly the accumulation of massive amounts of genotypic and phenotypic data that must be organized, analyzed, visualized, and interpreted. That series of challenges has been central to recent bioinformatics. For visualization, by far the most popular graphical representation has been the "clustered heat map," which compacts large amounts of information into a small space to bring out coherent patterns in the data. Despite its popularity, however, are such maps optimal for visually integrating information to extract valuable insights and generate fresh hypotheses? That question can be addressed through understanding the strengths and limitations of heat map visualization.