2D Depiction of Biological Interactions and Its Applications in Drug Design

Visualization of molecular interaction profile involved in chemical and biological systems could provide a straightforward way for understanding various disease processes and for the development of appropriate medical therapies. However, traditional molecular imaging techniques tend to showing molecular architecture at three-dimensional (3D) level; in this way blurry information involved in complex interaction network and distorted interfacial profile, in some cases, are unable to be sufficiently presented to the audiences. Alternatively, the diagrams generated using twodimensional (2D) molecular graphics approach that depicts systemic configuration and arrangement in a planar page may be more readily acceptable. In this article we review the methods and tools available for 2D depiction of chemical and biological interactions, particularly concerning their applications in the design and discovery of new drug entities.