Arjun Bhutkar and Stephen W. Schaeffer
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, MIT Department of Biology, and the Pennsylvania State University
Custom Visualization of Chromosomal Mapping from Whole Genome Shotgun Sequencing

"This image represents a window into evolutionary chromosomal dynamics across a set of closely related species (eight species of Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly) that shared a last common ancestor approximately 40-60 million years ago. The image illustrates genome-scale changes, which enables us to investigate rates of rearrangement on an evolutionary time-scale, constraints on genome shuffling, and the role of rearrangements in the process of speciation, among other things."

Reproduced with the permission of the Genetics Society of America.