SBGN.org is the global portal for documentation, news, and other information about the Systems Biology Graphical Notation (SBGN) project, an effort to standardize the graphical notation used in maps of biochemical and cellular processes studied in systems biology.

Standardizing the visual representation is crucial for more efficient and accurate transmission of biological knowledge between different communities in research, education, publishing, and more. When biologists are as familiar with the notation as electronics engineers are familiar with the notation of circuit schematics, they can save the time and effort required to familiarize themselves with different notations, and instead spend more time thinking about the biology being depicted.

SBGN is made up of three orthogonal languages, representing different visions of biological systems. Each language defines a comprehensive set of symbols with precise semantics, together with detailed syntactic rules how maps are to be interpreted.

On this site, you can browse some example maps to get a feeling for SBGN, read the SBGN specification documents , access software supporting SBGN, join online discussions, see current working documents in the SBGN wiki, and much more.

SBGN is the work of many people. It would not have been possible without the generous support of multiple organizations over the years, for which we are very thankful.

To quote SBGN as a whole, please use:

Le Novère N, Hucka M, Mi H, Moodie S, Schreiber F, Sorokin A, Demir E, Wegner K, Aladjem MI, Wimalaratne SM, Bergman FT, Gauges R, Ghazal P, Kawaji H, Li L, Matsuoka Y, Villéger A, Boyd SE, Calzone L, Courtot M, Dogrusoz U, Freeman TC, Funahashi A, Ghosh S, Jouraku A, Kim S, Kolpakov F, Luna A, Sahle S, Schmidt E, Watterson S, Wu G, Goryanin I, Kell DB, Sander C, Sauro H, Snoep JL, Kohn K, Kitano H. The Systems Biology Graphical Notation. Nat Biotechnol. 2009 27(8):735-41.