Graph Drawing Tools for Bioinformatics Research: An Overview

Much of the data in bioinformatics and data relationships can be represented by graphs. General purpose graph drawing tools are available, but not all are adequate for bioinformatics graphs as these tend to grow quite large. The specific purpose for our research was to investigate the applicability of existing graph drawing tools for visualization of very large phylogenetic trees. In this paper we describe some of the general functions and features that are required for exploring and comparing graphs in bioinformatics. We include a description of a selection of existing tools, to give an overview of the current abilities of graph drawing software and to analyze their advantages and drawbacks in the bioinformatics domain.