Visualization of … II
The array and variety of visualizations in postgenomics are seemingly unlimited. Here’s a subset of Marc Vidal’s research group’s preliminary map of the human interactome, originally published in Nature, vol. 437, pp. 1173-78 (2005).
I don’t know why I find this kind of network patterns so alluring. Network pics like these probably help sell grant applications, in this case (says Vidal, “Time for a Human Interactome project?”, The Scientist, vol. 20(3), p. 46, 2006), “an investment of $100 million should be enough to correlate the genome with function, and identify new basic research and drug targets”. The one above reminds me of visualizations of co-citation analysis patterns (which were invented by Henry Small in the 1970s) , like this one:
(from: http://informationr.net/ir/10-2/paper220.html)
10 Mar 2006 Thomas
I find the metaphorical links between biological network patterns and infrastructural one’s intriguing. A hundred years ago it was the nervous system that was visualized through communication systems such as railways, telegraphs and telephones. Today it is the genome and computer networks that mirror each other, although the pattern above makes me think more of metropolitan subway maps. Has this story been told/exhibited yet?
Subway maps, that’s good! The story has probably already been told, or is is about to be told (following “Soderqvist’s Law” = there is always at least one other scientist/scholar out there working on exactly the same problem as you are).
You’re right, it’s probably already turned into a network pattern of scholars doing research on bodily/infrastructural network patterns.