PETAL: A Python tool for deep analysis of biological pathways

Abstract

Summary: Although several bioinformatics tools have been developed to examine signaling pathways, little attention has been given to ever long-distance crosstalk mechanisms. Here, we developed PETAL, a Python tool that automatically explores and detects the most relevant nodes within a KEGG pathway, scanning and performing an in-depth search. PETAL can contribute to discovering novel therapeutic targets or biomarkers that are potentially hidden and not considered in the network under study. Availabilityand implementation: PETAL is a freely available open-source software. It runs on all platforms that support Python3. The user manual and source code are accessible from https://github.com/Pex2892/PETAL.