title: Understanding the sequence requirements of protein families: insights from the BioVis 2013 contests.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In 2011, the BioVis symposium of the IEEE VisWeek conferences inaugurated a new variety of data analysis contest. Aimed at fostering collaborations between computational scientists and biologists, the BioVis contest provided real data from biological domains with emerging visualization needs, in the hope that novel approaches would result in powerful new tools for the community. In 2011 and 2012 the theme of these contests was expression Quantitative Trait Locus analysis, within and across tissues respectively. In 2013 the topic was updated to protein sequence and mutation visualization.
  
  
  METHODS
  The contest was framed in the context of a real protein with numerous mutations that had lost function, and the question posed "what minimal set of changes would you propose to rescue function, or how could you support a biologist attempting to answer that question?". The data was grounded in actual experimental results in triosephosphate isomerase(TIM) enzymes. Seven teams composed of 36 individuals submitted entries with proposed solutions and approaches to the challenge. Their contributions ranged from careful analysis of the visualization and analytical requirements for the problem through integration of existing tools for analyzing the context and consequences of protein mutations, to completely new tools addressing the problem.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Judges found valuable and novel contributions in each of the entries, including interesting ways to hierarchicalize the protein into domains of informational interaction, tools for simultaneously understanding both sequential and spatial order, and approaches for conveying some types of inter-residue dependencies. In this manuscript we document the problem presented to the contestants, summarize the biological contributions of their entries, and suggest opportunities that this work has highlighted for even more improved tools in the future.
authors.affiliation: Nationwide Children's Hospital, 575 Children's Crossroad, 43215, Columbus, OH, USA ; The Ohio State University, 100 W. 18th Ave, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA ; Contest Chairs.
authors.forename: William C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Ray
authors.affiliation: Nationwide Children's Hospital, 575 Children's Crossroad, 43215, Columbus, OH, USA.
authors.forename: R Wolfgang
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Rumpf
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, 100 W. 18th Ave, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA ; Domain Experts.
authors.forename: Brandon
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sullivan
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, 100 W. 18th Ave, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA ; Domain Experts.
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Callahan
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, 100 W. 18th Ave, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA ; Domain Experts.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Magliery
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, 100 W. 18th Ave, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA ; Contest Chairs.
authors.forename: Raghu
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Machiraju
authors.affiliation: The Broad Institute, 7 Cambridge Center, 02142, Cambridge, MA, USA ; Contest Chairs.
authors.forename: Bang
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.affiliation: Genome Sciences Centre, 570 W, 7th Avenue, V5Z 4S6, Vancouver, BC, Canada ; Contest Chairs.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Krzywinski
authors.affiliation: Nationwide Children's Hospital, 575 Children's Crossroad, 43215, Columbus, OH, USA ; The Ohio State University, 100 W. 18th Ave, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA ; Contest Chairs.
authors.forename: Christopher W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Bartlett