SRS browser: a visual interface to the sequence retrieval system

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to the visual exploration and navigation of complex association networks of biological data sets, e.g., published papers, gene or protein information. The generic approach was implemented in the SRS Browser as an alternative visual interface to the highly used Sequence Retrieval System (SRS) [1]. SRS supports keyword-based search of about 400 biomedical databases. While the SRS presents search results as rank-ordered lists of matching entities, the SRS Browser displays entities and their relations for interactive exploration. A formal usability study was conducted to examine the SRS Browser interface's capabilities to support knowledge discovery and management.