Graphical Modeling Tools for Systems Biology

Modeling biological systems to understand their mechanistic behavior is an important activity in molecular systems biology. Mathematical modeling typically requires deep mathematical or computing knowledge, and this limits the spread of modeling tools among biologists. Graphical modeling languages have been introduced to minimize this limit. Here, we survey the main graphical formalisms (supported by software tools) available to model biological systems with a primary focus on their usability, within the framework of modeling reaction pathways with two-dimensional (2D) (possibly nested) compartments. Considering the main characteristics of the surveyed formalisms, we synthesise a new proposal (Style) and report the results of an online survey conducted among biologists to assess usability of available graphical formalisms. We consider this proposal a guideline developed from what we learned in the survey, which can inform development of graphical formalisms to model reaction pathways in 2D space.