First, may I start by saying how great it is to see such an in-depth collection of references on biological visualization. Knowing the field very well, I found no gaps in your reference list for relevant papers on biological visualization across all major parts of your paper.

While the content is good, the text needs some polishing with awkward phrasing spread across the publication. This can be easily fixed however.

Additionally, there are a few small issues that I believe need addressing before publication that are detailed below.

Minor Essential Revisions

P. Programming languages and libraries for building visual prototypes

P1) For the section on programming languages and libraries, not one of the things you list is an actual language. It's a library built on top of a language. Perhaps the title should be rephrased to take that in to consideration

P2) You've focused a lot on 3D visualization in your final paragraphs on the future, however you've mentioned only one not so well used library for 3D visualization in your review. Three.js would need to be mentioned alongside WebGL to give full coverage.

F. Figures

F1) Replace the 3D line graphs at the end of the paper with 2D. 3D offers nothing in this type of visualization and only obscures the important information.

F2) The colours of the boxes in the flow diagrams are not the most visually attractive thing I've ever seen. Replace the colours with a palette from color brewer for instance. Level of interest An article of importance in its field Quality of written English Needs some language corrections before being published Statistical review No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician. Declaration of competing interests None.

Authors' response to reviewers: (http://www.gigasciencejournal.com/imedia/3160555921824736_comment.pdf)