Hybrid Visualization of Protein-Lipid and Protein-Protein Interaction

Abstract

In the Molecular Dynamics (MD) visualization literature, different approaches are utilized to study protein-lipid interactions (PLI) and protein-protein interaction (PPI) in decoupled contexts. However, the two types of interaction occur in the same space-time domain. It is beneficial to study the PLI and PPI in a unified context. Nevertheless, the simulation's size, length, and complexity increase the challenge of understanding the dynamic behavior. We propose a novel framework consisting of four linked views, a time-dependent 3D view, a novel hybrid view, a clustering timeline, and a details-on-demand window. We introduce a selection of visual designs to convey the behavior of PLI and PPI through a unified coordinate system. Abstraction is used to present proteins in hybrid 2D space, a projected tiled space is used to present both PLI and PPI at the particle level in a heat-map style visual design while glyphs are used to represent PPI at the molecular level. We couple visually separable visual designs in a unified coordinate space. The result lets the user study both PLI and PPI separately or together in a unified visual analysis framework. We also exemplify its use with case studies focusing on protein clustering and we report domain expert feedback.