Patent ID: 7003440

Claim:
A method for displaying a gene expression phenomenon in one or more living organisms in a system comprising a database that collects, for each cell or each site of said living organisms along a time axis, data indicative of a shape of said cell or site and expression data associated with a degree of expression of the gene expression phenomenon in said cell or site along a time axis; and processing means adapted to obtain said data indicative of the shape and expression data that are collected in said database to visualize and display the gene expression phenomenon on a display screen, wherein said method comprising: displaying as a three-dimensional image on the display screen a shape of said living organisms of which the gene expression phenomenon is observed; setting a viewpoint by a user via a keyboard or a mouse on a three-dimensional space where the gene expression phenomenon in said living organisms displayed is to be observed; reading the gene expression data of said cell or site of said living organisms out of said database, creating a plurality of three-dimensional images representing the gene expression phenomenon at the viewpoint set at said second step or at a fixed viewpoint, to display at least one of said three-dimensional images in multiple tones using one color or multiple colors, each of the tones corresponding to a degree of expression of the gene expression phenomenon; and simulating gene expression data by analyzing actual gene expression data and chronologically displaying a simulated change in shape of said cell or site of said living organisms caused by an external stimulation artificially incurred by altering simulation parameters according to a planned experiment and a change in shape of a cell or site caused by internal activities of said cell or site of said living organisms; and displaying an animation of a three-dimensional image representing the gene expression phenomenon from a certain viewpoint at a certain instant of time.