The GLOBE 3D Genome Platform – A new virtual paper tool for systems biological/medical data integration.

Genomes are tremendous co-evolutionary holistic systems for molecular storage, processing and fabrication of information. Their system-biological complexity remains, however, still largely mysterious, despite the huge advances in the understanding of the general sequential, three-dimensional and regulatory organization. With the development of the GLOBE 3D Genome Platform we have created a completely novel grid based virtual “paper” tool and in fact the first systems biological/medical genome browser integrating the holistic complexity of genomes in a single easy comprehensible way, which is used in WP1-5. Based on a detailed study of biophysical and IT requirements, every architectural level from sequence to morphology of one or several genomes can be approached in a real (WP1-3) and in a simulated symbolic representation (WP4) simultaneously and navigated by continuous scale-free zooming within a three-dimensional OpenGL and grid driven environment. In principle several multi-dimensional data sets can be visualized, customized in terms of arrangement, shape, colour, and texture etc. as well as accessed and annotated individually or in groups using internal or external data bases/facilities. Hence, the GLOBE 3D Genome Platform is an example of a grid based approach towards a virtual holistic desktop for system biological/medical genomic work combining the three fundamental distributed resources: i) visual data representation, ii) data access and management, and iii) data analysis and creation.