Figure 1

Metabolic modeling workflow. The processes highlighted in yellow represent the model creation cycle: The draft model is created by model inference tools based on models for similar organism, pathway and reaction information extracted from model repositories and pathway and reaction databases; it is then iteratively improved during the process of curation and analysis. The resulting model can in its turn be added to model repositories. The processes highlighted in red show model usages: simulation and knowledge-oriented exploration. The processes highlighted in green describe comparison and combination of several models. As the model creation cycle, they also include the curation and analysis stage. The processes represented with the red arrows require human expert’s intervention, and thus need good visualization tools, ways of splitting models into modules and different levels of abstraction.