GlycoBrowser: A Tool for Contextual Visualization of Biological Data and Pathways Using Ontologies

摘要

This paper introduces GlycoBrowser, a dynamic biological pathway exploration and visualization tool. Its capabilities include incremental navigation of pathways, as well as overlaying relevant experimental data about glycans and reactions within a pathway. The use of ontologies not only allows dynamic construction of pathways, but also facilitates more accurate validation of the information retrieved. Pathway exploration is initiated by means of an ontologically driven glycan structure building tool, which facilitates glycan structure construction and searching with minimal user error. Because of the complex nature of glycan structures and the difficulty involved in interpreting the associated data, GlycoBrowser is tailored especially to suit the needs of glycobiologists.