We took the genetic code of each human chromosome and assigned a color to every of the four bases:
- adenine (A) – green
- thymine (T) – red
- guanine (G) – white
- cytosine (C) – blue
As there are still areas unknown code within the chromosomes, we assigned the color gray to these spaces. Then we rendered 2-dimensional pictures displaying each base by one pixel. We determined the image width to 3,500 pixel. This enables comparable proportions to other 2-dimensional DNA representations (e.g. ideograms). The resulting pictures are huge and can have a height over 70,000 pixels for the largest chromosomes. Because of the huge amount of data, rendering of a single chromosome image could take up several hours.
Example: Detail of chromosome 11
Click on one of the chromosomes of the Chromosome Menu (below the Main Menu) to view the individual chromosomes, or just click here to start with chromosome 1. Each rendered chromosome is displayed entirely by an overview picture reduced to an image width of 200 pixel. Besides some general information about the chromosome and at least two gene examples, we show some image details with interesting pattern and structures.