A Computer-aided Design Tool with Semiautomatic Image-Processing Features for Visualizing Biological Pathways

The explosion in biological data resulting from highthroughput experiments requires new software tools to manipulate and display pathways in a way that can integrate disparate sources of information. A visual Java-based CAD tool for drawing and annotating biological pathways with semiautomatic image-processing features is described in this paper. The result of the image-editing process is an XML file for the appropriate links. This tool integrates the pathway images and XML file sources. The system has facilities for linking graphical objects to external databases and is capable of reproducing existing visual representations of pathway maps.

J2.5dPathway: A 2.5D Visualization Tool to Display Selected Nodes in Biological Pathways, in Parallel Planes

The characteristics of metabolic pathways make them particularly amenable to layered graph drawing methods. This paper presents a visual Java-based tool for drawing and annotating biological pathways in twoand- a-half dimensions (2.5D) as an alternative to three dimensional (3D) visualizations. Such visualization allows user to display different groups of clustered nodes, in different parallel planes, and to see a detailed view of a group of objects in focus and its place in the context of the whole system. This tool is an extended version of J2dPathway.