Open Source & Open Data
Tools we plan to open source
Biosynthesis pathway tool
The interactive pathway canvas on each fatty-acid profile: an explorable map of how a fatty acid is made and what it is made from, with elongation and desaturation steps, the enzymes that carry them out, and the references behind each edge. It is built to take a pathway definition and render, pan, zoom and focus it — nothing about the renderer is specific to our data.
FattyModel2D — 2D structure renderer
Draws a fatty acid from its SMILES as a clean zig-zag skeletal structure, with optional hydrogens, carbon numbering, omega labelling and cis/trans geometry. It is the renderer behind the structures in the browser, the category cards and every profile page, and it is deliberately dependency-free and small.
FattyModel3D — 3D model viewer
The rotatable three-dimensional model on each profile, with double bonds highlighted so the effect of chain length and unsaturation on real molecular shape is visible rather than merely described.
Phospholipid Lab — build a lipid
Assemble a phospholipid from a head group and two fatty acids and watch the molecule rebuild in three dimensions, with the sn-1 and sn-2 chains, their splay and spin, and the head group all under your control.
Membrane simulator
A grid of those lipids assembled into a membrane patch and run as a live simulation, so the effect of chain saturation on packing, thickness and fluidity can be watched rather than asserted.
More to come
Other pieces — the comparison and charting layer used by the food and infant-formula profiles, and the reference-handling components that carry the evidence and confidence behind each statement — are candidates for the same treatment once they have settled down.
Open data
Open data & a public API
We plan for most of the data stored here to become downloadable: the fatty-acid catalogue with its structures and identifiers, the composition profiles, the metabolite and pathway records, and the publication references that support them. The intended shape is a documented, versioned dataset rather than a one-off dump, with a lightweight API for programmatic access.
What we build on
This site stands on other people’s work — open-source code, open databases and open APIs. Every one of them is linked below.
Libraries running on these pages
The WebGL engine behind the interactive 3D models. Vendored with the site rather than loaded from a CDN, so the models keep working if a CDN does not.
Cheminformatics in the browser — parsing SMILES and deriving structure for comparison.
Draws a molecule straight from its SMILES string, used to cross-check how a structure is formed.
Every chart on the food, profile and comparison pages.
Open data & APIs we call
The literature index behind our citations. Records are fetched in batches through NCBI E-utilities.
The API we use to pull PubMed and PMC records — abstracts, authors, journals and dates — for the publications we cite.
A second literature API, used for abstracts, open-access flags and full-text links where NCBI is thin.
Resolves a paper between its PMID, PMCID and DOI, so one publication stays one record however it was cited.
The permanent identifier every citation resolves through.
Molecule information, identifiers and the SDF files behind our structures.
Predicted protein structures and visuals for the enzymes in fatty-acid metabolism.
The lipid classification and nomenclature our fatty-acid records are keyed against.
Human metabolite records for the downstream products we track.
The composition dataset behind the food profiles.
Each is used under its own licence or terms of use. The full attribution list, with versions and licence texts, will accompany the first code release.