W385 JBrowse: a Modern Genome Browser

Date: Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Time: 1:30 PM
Room: Golden West
Robert Buels , University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Ian Holmes , University of California at Berkeley, CA
JBrowse is a JavaScript genome browser with a modern look and feel. It is portable, easy to deploy, scalable to large datasets, and readily extended. Because it is implemented using modern client-side asynchronous JavaScript techniques, scrolling and zooming are fast and continuous, helping users rapidly gain an intuitive sense of how different pieces of genomic data relate to one another. Unlike previous-generation genome browsers that display the genome as a series of images transmitted piecemeal from a remote server, JBrowse intelligently fetches the minimal relevant data directly from the server and does nearly all other work in the browser itself. This technique gives JBrowse many advantages when compared to previous genome browsers: load on the server machine is dramatically reduced, the user's experience no longer depends on waiting for round-trip communication with the server, administrators can easily extend and integrate JBrowse with other web software and content, and the whole system can scale to handle large datasets such as those generated by next-generation sequencing technologies. This talk will give an overview of the project, as well as go over recent improvements to JBrowse, including better interfaces for working with large numbers of tracks, "rubber-band" region zooming, user-customizable track settings, and a more capable primary JSON data format.