Art of the Personalized Oncogenomics Program
How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
— Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind (Ch 25)
contents
The legend can be printed at 4" × 6". The bitmap resolution is 600 dpi.
For every case, we sequence the DNA to study the genome structure and the RNA to discover which genes are expressed and to what extent. The analysis is quite complex and brings together many steps: sequence alignment, structural variation detection, expression profiling, pathway analysis and so on. Every case is "summarized" by a lengthy report, such as the one below, which can run to over 40 pages.
One of the goals of the 5-year anniversary art was to represent the cases in a way to clearly show their number, classification as well as diversity. There are many metrics that can be used and I decided to choose the case's correlation to other cancer types.
correlation to TCGA cancer database
For every POG case, the gene expression of 1,744 key genes is compared to that of 1,000's of cases in the TCGA database of cancer samples. For a given cancer type in the TCGA database (e.g. BRCA), we visualize the correlations using box plots. The box plot is ideal for showing the distribution of values in a sample.
The 10 largest Spearman correlation coefficients for the case shown above are
case corr type tissue ----------------------------------------------- POG661 0.436 BRCA Breast POG661 0.371 PRAD Urologic POG661 0.295 OV Gynecologic POG661 0.257 UCEC Gynecologic POG661 0.244 LUAD Thoracic POG661 0.235 CESC_CAD Gynecologic POG661 0.225 MB_Adult Central Nervous System POG661 0.222 KICH Urologic POG661 0.219 THCA Endocrine POG661 0.208 UCS Gynecologic
In the figure below I show how the final encoding of the correlations is done. First, the top three correlations are taken—using more generates a busy look and diminishes visual impact. The correlations are encoded as concentric rings.
Because in most cases the differences in the top 3 correlations are relatively small, differences are emphasized by non-linearly scaling the encoding (the correlations are first scaled `r^3`).
The type face is Proxima Nova. The colors for each tissue source are
Gastrointestinal ● 234,62,144
Breast ● 237,75,51
Thoracic ● 242,130,56
Gynecologic ● 253,188,61
Soft tissue ● 244,217,59
Skin ● 193,216,51
Urologic ● 114,197,49
Hematologic ● 29,166,68
Head and neck ● 43,168,224
Endocrine ● 71,82,178
Central nervous system ● 127,65,146
Other ● 150,150,150
Cell Genomics cover
Our cover on the 11 January 2023 Cell Genomics issue depicts the process of determining the parent-of-origin using differential methylation of alleles at imprinted regions (iDMRs) is imagined as a circuit.
Designed in collaboration with with Carlos Urzua.
Akbari, V. et al. Parent-of-origin detection and chromosome-scale haplotyping using long-read DNA methylation sequencing and Strand-seq (2023) Cell Genomics 3(1).
Browse my gallery of cover designs.
Science Advances cover
My cover design on the 6 January 2023 Science Advances issue depicts DNA sequencing read translation in high-dimensional space. The image showss 672 bases of sequencing barcodes generated by three different single-cell RNA sequencing platforms were encoded as oriented triangles on the faces of three 7-dimensional cubes.
More details about the design.
Kijima, Y. et al. A universal sequencing read interpreter (2023) Science Advances 9
Browse my gallery of cover designs.
Regression modeling of time-to-event data with censoring
If you sit on the sofa for your entire life, you’re running a higher risk of getting heart disease and cancer. —Alex Honnold, American rock climber
In a follow-up to our Survival analysis — time-to-event data and censoring article, we look at how regression can be used to account for additional risk factors in survival analysis.
We explore accelerated failure time regression (AFTR) and the Cox Proportional Hazards model (Cox PH).
Dey, T., Lipsitz, S.R., Cooper, Z., Trinh, Q., Krzywinski, M & Altman, N. (2022) Points of significance: Regression modeling of time-to-event data with censoring. Nature Methods 19.
Music video for Max Cooper's Ascent
My 5-dimensional animation sets the visual stage for Max Cooper's Ascent from the album Unspoken Words. I have previously collaborated with Max on telling a story about infinity for his Yearning for the Infinite album.
I provide a walkthrough the video, describe the animation system I created to generate the frames, and show you all the keyframes
The video recently premiered on YouTube.
Renders of the full scene are available as NFTs.
Gene Cultures exhibit — art at the MIT Museum
I am more than my genome and my genome is more than me.
The MIT Museum reopened at its new location on 2nd October 2022. The new Gene Cultures exhibit featured my visualization of the human genome, which walks through the size and organization of the genome and some of the important structures.
Annals of Oncology cover
My cover design on the 1 September 2022 Annals of Oncology issue shows 570 individual cases of difficult-to-treat cancers. Each case shows the number and type of actionable genomic alterations that were detected and the length of therapies that resulted from the analysis.
Pleasance E et al. Whole-genome and transcriptome analysis enhances precision cancer treatment options (2022) Annals of Oncology 33:939–949.
Browse my gallery of cover designs.
