A Visual Comparison of Hand-Drawn and Machine-Generated Human Metabolic Pathways

Abstract

This poster abstract presents a visual comparison between three hand-drawn and one machine-generated human metabolic pathway diagrams. The human metabolic pathways, which describe significant biochemical reactions in the human body, have been increasingly investigated due to the development of analysis processes and are compiled into pathway diagrams to provide an overview of reaction in human body. This complex network includes about 5,000 metabolites and 7,500 reactions, which are hierarchically nested and difficult to visualize. We collect and analyze well-known human metabolic pathway diagrams, and summarize the design choices of these diagrams, respectively. Together with a machine-generated diagram, we can understand the visual complexity of three hand-drawn and one machine-generated diagrams.