J2.5dPathway: A 2.5D Visualization Tool to Display Selected Nodes in Biological Pathways, in Parallel Planes

The characteristics of metabolic pathways make them particularly amenable to layered graph drawing methods. This paper presents a visual Java-based tool for drawing and annotating biological pathways in two- and a-half dimensions (2.5D) as an alternative to three-dimensional (3D) visualizations. Such visualization allows user to display different groups of clustered nodes, in different parallel planes, and to see a detailed view of a group of objects in focus and its place in the context of the whole system. This tool is an extended version of J2dPathway.