ABSTRACT
Biological processes are often represented in the form of networks such as protein-protein interaction networks and metabolic pathways. The study of biological networks , their modeling, analysis, and visualization are important tasks in life science today. An understanding of these networks is essential to make biological sense of much of the complex data that is now being generated. This increasing importance of biological networks is also evidenced by the rapid increase in publications about network-related topics and the growing number of research groups dealing with this area. Most biological networks are still far from being complete and they are usually difficult to interpret due to the complexity of the relationships and the peculiarities of the data. Network visualization is a fundamental method that helps scientists in understanding biological networks and in uncovering important properties of the underlying biochemical processes. This chapter therefore deals with major biological networks, their visualization requirements and useful layout methods. We start with some basic biology and important biological networks.
