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SBGN is an international community effort aimed to standardize the visualisation of pathways and networks for the purpose of efficient and accurate exchange of biological knowledge between research communities from diverse backgrounds, industry and player in systems biology.
The development of SBGN occurred during 2005-2008 with support from the Japanese New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). Principle investigators were Hiroaki Kitano, Akira Funahashi, Nicolas Le Novere and Michael Hucka. Additional support has been provided by the OIST, BBSRC, EML Research GmbH, the Beckman Institute BNMC and NSF.
The visual languages covered by SBGN are Process Description (PD), Entity Relationship and Activity Flow. The Process Description can show molecular interactions in a network of biochemical entities. The Entity Relationship language allows the visualization of influences of entities nodes on other relationships. The Activity Flow language shows the flow of information between biochemical entities in a network.
Process Description (PD) is closest to metabolic and regulatory pathways seen in biological literature and textbooks and represents mechanistic and temporal dependencies of biological interactions and transformations as a graph. There are different types of nodes which include entity pools like metabolites, proteins, genes and complexes. There are also processes like reactions, associations and influences. Relationships between the nodes such as consumption, production, stimulation and inhibition are described.
