title: SBtab: a flexible table format for data exchange in systems biology.
abstract: : SBtab is a table-based data format for Systems Biology, designed to support automated data integration and model building. It uses the structure of spreadsheets and defines conventions for table structure, controlled vocabularies and semantic annotations. The format comes with predefined table types for experimental data and SBML-compliant model structures and can easily be customized to cover new types of data.
  
  
  
  SBtab documents can be created and edited with any text editor or spreadsheet tool. The website www.sbtab.net provides online tools for syntax validation and conversion to SBML and HTML, as well as software for using SBtab in MS Excel, MATLAB and R. The stand-alone Python code contains functions for file parsing, validation, conversion to SBML and HTML and an interface to SQLite databases, to be integrated into Systems Biology workflows. A detailed specification of SBtab, including examples and descriptions of table types and available tools, can be found at www.sbtab.net
  
  
  
  : wolfram.liebermeister@gmail.com.
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Biophysics, Institute of Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Timo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lubitz
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Biophysics, Institute of Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hahn
authors.affiliation: COS/Bioquant, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Frank T
authors.initials: FT
authors.lastname: Bergmann
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Elad
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Noor
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Biophysics, Institute of Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Edda
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Klipp
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biochemistry, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Wolfram
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liebermeister
mesh_terms: D016208:Databases, Factual; D008954:Models, Biological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012984:Software; D049490:Systems Biology