February 16, 2010 No, it's not Christmas in a beehive. Instead,
each hexagon in this shifting honeycomb represents a gene. A
computer program called GATE makes these movies by reading the
data from an experiment and grouping genes that turn on (red)
and off (green) at similar times. When researchers click on any
part of the honeycomb, GATE connects them to databases brimming
with more information about gene and protein activity. Such
interaction helps biologists wrap their heads around the vast
amount of data they and their colleagues have gathered. It also
inspires new hypotheses in areas as diverse as stem cell
differentiation and ecosystem evolution. Courtesy of the Ma'ayan
Laboratory, Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Featured in the
February 17, 2010, issue of Biomedical Beat.