Latex For Bioinformatics Presentation

Question

[Maria]

Hello, I am a bioinformatics student I know some programming I have to prepare a presentation for the middle of the next week. In the Presentation I will need to draw the mitochondrial Dna with the genes and do some other graphics representing the genes in a linear form. I Heard about latex for doing such things. But I really don't know from where to start I already installed texworks but my question is : Do I need to install something else ? Is there any place to start learning latex especially the things I do need for my presentation ? Thanks in advance

[Neilfws]

You will not learn sufficient LaTeX by the middle of next week. But learn it sometime, it's useful.

[Giovanni M Dall'Olio]

From what you explain, it seems that rather than LaTeX, you need to learn how to use a software to edit vectorial images, like Inkscape ( http://inkscape.org/) or the gimp.

[Ben]

Just to clarify, Inkscape is vector graphics software but GIMP is for raster graphics, hence they're open-source alternatives to Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, respectively.

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

cross posted on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19056043

Answer 1

[matted]

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking, but the Beamer package is popular for making presentations with LaTex.

Answer 2

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

(off topic... ? a better place to ask is: http://tex.stackexchange.com/ )

I generate this kind of vectorial figures using http://www.inkscape.org + svg

I then import the picture in latex using \immediate\write18

\newcommand{\inkscape}[2]{
\IfFileExists{jeter_svg_#1.png}{}{\immediate\write18{inkscape -z --export-png=tmp_svg_#1.png #1
.svg}}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[#2]{tmp_svg_#1.png}
\end{center}
}
(...)
\inkscape{samflags0x2}{scale=0.35}

see the Makefile and the tex file in my https://github.com/lindenb/courses/tree/master/about.ngsformats