Bionode

Bionode is a term used in biology and information science to denote a node that represents a biological entity, process, or data element within a network or data workflow. In network biology, bionodes are the vertices of graphs that model interactions such as gene regulation, protein-protein interactions, metabolic reactions, or signaling cascades. Each bionode carries attributes that identify the entity (for example, a gene ID, protein accession, or metabolite symbol) and may include quantitative or qualitative data such as expression levels, kinetic parameters, or activation states.

In analytical workflows, bionodes can form graphs or hypergraphs, enabling algorithms for centrality, shortest paths, community detection, and network propagation to identify key components or modules.

In data integration, bionodes help unify heterogeneous data by linking identifiers across databases and by encoding metadata and provenance.

The term is also used as a brand or project name in software contexts, with several open-source tools adopting BioNode or bionode as a label for modular bioinformatics workflows or data integration libraries.

See also: network biology, systems biology, graph theory, SBML, BioPAX.