Dynamic publication media with the COPASI R Connector (CoRC)

Abstract

In this article we show how dynamic publication media and the COPASI R Connector (CoRC) can be combined in a natural and synergistic way to communicate (biochemical) models. Dynamic publication media are becoming a popular tool for authors to effectively compose and publish their work. They are built from templates and the final documents are created dynamically. In addition, they can also be interactive. Working with dynamic publication media is made easy with the programming environment R via its integration with tools such as R Markdown, Jupyter and Shiny. Additionally, the COmplex PAthway SImulator COPASI (http://www.copasi.org), a widely used biochemical modelling toolkit, is available in R through the use of the COPASI R Connector (CoRC, https://jpahle.github.io/CoRC). Models are a common tool in the mathematical biosciences, in particular kinetic models of biochemical networks in (computational) systems biology.We focus on three application areas of dynamic publication media and CoRC: Documentation (reproducible workflows), Teaching (creating self-paced lessons) and Science Communication (immersive and engaging presentation). To illustrate these, we created six dynamic document examples in the form of R Markdown and Jupyter notebooks, hosted on the platforms GitHub, shinyapps.io, Google Colaboratory.Having code and output in one place, creating documents in template-form and the option of interactivity make the combination of dynamic documents and CoRC a versatile tool.All our example documents are freely available at https://jpahle.github.io/DynamiCoRC under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence.