New heatmap display mode for bigBed tracks

[Luis Nassar]

We are pleased to announce a new heatmap display mode for the Genome Browser.

Heatmaps replace the standard block-and-line gene display with a color-coded grid: each block position along the item (e.g., an exon) becomes a column, each row represents a sample or condition, and cells are colored by score using a customizable gradient. This makes it easy to spot patterns in multi-sample quantitative data—such as variant effects, gene expression, or methylation levels—directly in their genomic context.

The heatmap display is already in use on our MaveDB Experiment Heatmaps track, which presents the results of multiplexed assays of variant effects across gene transcripts. In the example above, each row is an amino acid substitution and each column is a position along the transcript, with red cells indicating higher functional scores and blue cells indicating lower scores.

To create your own heatmap tracks, add style heatmap to a bigBed track’s trackDb entry along with extra fields for row labels, color bounds, and score arrays. Our new heatmap documentation page walks through the entire process step by step, from preparing your data to loading it in a track hub.

For more information on bigBed and other supported data formats, see our data file formats FAQ.