Improved insights into the SABIO-RK database via visualization

Abstract

SABIO-RK is a database for biochemical reactions and their kinetics. Data in SABIO-RK are inherently multidimensional and complex. The complex relationships between the data are often difficult to follow or even not represented when using standard tabular views. With an increasing number of data points the mismatch between tables and insights becomes more obvious, and getting an overview of the data becomes harder. Such complex data benefit from being presented using specially adapted visual tools. Visualization is a natural and user-friendly way to quickly get an overview of the data and to detect clusters and outliers. Here, we describe the implementation of a variety of visualization concepts into a common interface within the SABIO-RK biochemical reaction kinetics database. For that purpose, we use a heat map, parallel coordinates and scatter plots to allow the interactive visual exploration of general entry-based information of biochemical reactions and specific kinetic parameter values. Database URL https://sabiork.h-its.org/