Customizable Visualization on Demand for Hierarchically Organized Information in Biochemical Networks

Systems biology is concerned with systemic and integrative studies of complex interactions between molecular components within microorganisms and higher cells, and aims at generating holistic understanding of biological processes. The interactions between genes, proteins and metabolites are naturally represented by hierarchically interconnected biochemical networks on different levels. Moreover, the network topology is typically supplemented by qualitative information and quantitative data on individual mechanisms and system states, for example enzyme kinetics and flow rates. Measurement data are often combined with simulation results and knowledge from databases. Due to constantly improving high throughput techniques we increasingly face the challenge of visualizing manifold and extensive data within large biochemical network diagrams. This issue is effectively addressed by the interactive Visualization on Demand (VoD) approach for hierarchically structured network diagrams presented in this contribution.