Abstract
Observing and documenting shape has fueled biological understanding as
the shape of biomolecules, cells, tissues, and organisms arise from the
effects of genetics, development, and the environment. The vision of
Topological Data Analysis (TDA), that data is shape and shape is data,
will be relevant as biology transitions into a data-driven era where
meaningful interpretation of large datasets is a limiting factor. We
focus first on quantifying the morphology of X-ray CT scans of barley
spikes and seeds using topological descriptors based on the Euler
Characteristic Transform. We then successfully train a support vector
machine to distinguish and classify 28 different varieties of barley
based solely on the 3D shape of their grains. This shape
characterization will allow us later to link genotype with phenotype,
furthering our understanding on how the physical shape is genetically
coded in DNA.