The belly button is a peculiar habitat that houses a lot of microbes yet it remains unexplored. The Public Science lab in January 2011, undertook a research to investigate the Biodiversity of microbes in the human navel as well as the beneficial roles microbes play in our daily lives. In this project, I built an interactive dashboard to explore the Belly Button Biodiversity datasetLinks, which catalogs the microbes that colonize human navels.
The dataset reveals that a small handful of microbial species (also called operational taxonomic units, or OTUs, in the study) were present in more than 70% of people, while the rest were relatively rare. The samples.json file was not accessed locally but it is provided for reference.
Firstly, I created an app that renders data dynamically to the dashboard upon request. I used the D3 library and a promise function then to read in samples.json from the URL and log the data for inspection. Following that, I built a function that initializes a default display.The default display was the first sample of the data. One important feature of the dashboard is a dropdown menu that can be used to select choice id representing an individual for viewing. Upon user selection of id, the barplot- showing the top top 10 OTUs found in that individual (Fig 1), the distribution of the OTU (Fig 2), the washing frequency for the individual's belly button (Fig 3) and the individual's demographic information (Fig 4) are all updated on the dashboard (Fig 5).
- Fig 1: Horizontal bar chart display of the Top 10 OTU. The sample values represent the y-axis for the bar chart. While the OTU ids served as the labels for the bar chart. I also added a chart feature that allows hovertext for the OTU labels.
- Fig 2: Bubble chart showing the distribution of OTU in an individual. The OTU ids and sample values served as the x values and y values respectively. The sample values represent the marker size while the OTU ids (i.e., the composition of bacteria) served as the the marker colors. Again, I also added a chart feature that allows hovertext for the OTU labels.
- Fig 3: Guage chart showing the weekly washing frequency of an individual.
- Fig 4: The sample metadata, i.e., an individual's demographic information.
- Fig 5: Dashboard to explore the microbes in a selected individual's belly button
I deployed my app to a free static page hosting service. Click here to view. For best experience open dashboard with full view.
Hulcr, J. et al. (2012) A Jungle in There: Bacteria in Belly Buttons are Highly Diverse, but Predictable. Retrieved from: http://robdunnlab.com/projects/belly-button-biodiversity/results-and-data/Links.