Life depends on the interaction of all body parts and on the body’s ability to respond to constant changes that occur both inside it and outside it. To respond to a variety of changes, the body produces and transforms many molecules. The process is well depicted in illustrated biological pathways.

Biological Pathways are useful visual representations of the biological teamwork that takes place in the body. As representations, they allow researchers to better organize the information, and better understand all the steps and key players of a Biological Pathway. The problem with visual representations of Biological Pathways is that they are, in most cases, static images that cannot be integrated with other data, or easily annotated or updated. Additionally, the work of putting a single Biological Pathway together can be huge and involve consultation to many resources, from databases, to papers, to books.

Having this in mind, a small group of scientists proposed the creation of a community engaged software for the creation, annotation, editing and updating of Biological Pathways that is based on the wiki model.

WikiPathways is an open and collaborative platform dedicated to the creation and curation of biological pathways. The program allows the participation of anyone interested in the subject, from students to professors, to researchers.

The creators of WikiPathways hope that with the open wiki program, the creation of Biological Pathways will advance significantly because scientists working in different fields will be able to collaborate with relevant information necessary to build complex pathways that involve different classes of molecules and interaction that usually are the subject of interest of people working in different areas.

WikiPathways is already active and can be found at http://wikipathways.org/index.php/WikiPathways