How can I combine canonical pathways to build a model pathway for my research of interest?

Figure 1. Copy pathways in Project Folder

Figure 2. Copy one pathway on clipboard

Figure 3. Combine pathways

Figure 4. Move membrane

Figure 5. Final combined pathway

Pathway Studio includes canonical metabolic and signaling pathways that have been curated by our scientists.  You can edit, expand, and modify these pathways using Pathway Studio's pathway building functionality.

Here is a workflow to combine two canonical signaling pathways to build your own pathway of interest:

1- To keep intact your collection of pathways (located in the 'Pathways' Folder of your working space), make a copy of the two canonical pathways to be combined in your Project Folder (Figure 1).

2- Open both pathways.

3- Copy one pathway on your clipboard and paste it in the other pathway (you may want to copy the simpler one and paste it in the more complex one to minimize manual graphical changes). See Figure 2 and 3.

4- Use the visualization tools located in the advanced visualization toolbar to beautify the combined pathway (Figure 3).

Note: The default layout of signaling pathways is ‘Layout by Localization’. To only move the membrane image without moving membrane proteins, first right click on the membrane and unselect the option ‘Drag Localized Entities With Image’ (Figure 4).

Your two pathways are now combined and can be saved as a new file. In figure 5, the pathway 'Notch -> NF-kB signaling' (highlighted in blue) was combined with 'EGFR/ERBB2 -> HIF1A signaling' pathway (Figure 5).