From the evolutionary standpoint, DNA replication and transcription are two fundamental processes enabling reliable passage of fitness advantages through generations (in DNA form) and manifestation of these advantages (in RNA form), respectively. Paradoxically, both of these basic mechanisms not only preserve genetic information but also apparently cause systematic genomic changes directly. Here, I show how genome-scale sequence analysis can help identify such effects, estimate their relative contributions, and find practical application (e.g. for predicting replication origins). Visualization of bioinformatics results is often the best way of connecting them to the underlying biological question and I describe the process of choosing the visual representation that would help compare different organisms, genomes, and chromosomes.