ColorSquare: A colorful square visualization of DNA sequences

Visualization tool provides a simple way of viewing and analyzing DNA sequences. Here we propose a five-color map visualization of DNA sequences-ColorSquare. ColorSquare has several advantages: (1) no degeneracy, (2) no loss of information, (3) highly compact, (4) colorful, and (5) square. Due to square, it can be converted into a matrix, from which numerical characterizations can easily be extracted. Moreover, using the feature that human eyes are more sensitive to color than to shape, we proposed a new mutation analysis based on ColorSquare. It shows that colorful visualization tool is more effective for human than visualization tool based on shape. Similarity analyses based on two kinds of numerical characterizations are also presented.