A web based tool for integration of molecular pathway models

Developing complex models of cellular function requires the collaboration of multiple teams of researchers remotely distributed worldwide. A challenge of computational systems biology is to find easy and accessible mechanisms to enable such collaboration to construct higher level models of cellular function. This paper presents the development of an on-line Web portal for enabling open access to Cytosolve, an existing, proven and scalable computational architecture for integrating quantitative molecular pathways. The developed graphical user interface allows ease-of-use for developers of quantitative molecular pathway models to remotely collaborate to build larger and more complex models using the Cytosolve infrastructure. The on-line Web portal will be accessible and it will allow users to remotely collaborate with the existing Cytosolve computational environment that supports integration of models in a parallel manner without geographical restrictions. A creator of a model will be able to integrate their model from their local location to an ensemble of distributed models through this on-line Web portal.