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 diagrams of biochemical and cellular processes studied in systems biology.

Standardizing the diagrammatic notation is crucial for more efficient and accurate transmission of biological knowledge between different research communities in the expanding field of systems biology. Notations traditionally used by researchers and software have been informal, idiosyncratic and highly variable. Until SBGN, there has been no standard agreed-upon convention defining precisely how to draw biochemical interaction diagrams in a regular and systematic way that helps readers interpret them consistently and unambiguously.

SBGN defines a comprehensive set of symbols with precise semantics, together with detailed syntactic rules defining their use and how diagrams are to be interpreted. By standardizing the visual notation, SBGN can serve as a bridge between different communities in research, education, publishing, and more. The real payoff will come when researchers are as familiar with the notation as electronics engineers are familiar with the notation of circuit schematics. If researchers are saved the time and effort required to familiarize themselves with different notations, they can spend more time thinking about the biology being depicted.

On this site, you can browse some example diagrams to get a feeling for SBGN, read the SBGN specification documents , 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.