Along with the recent explosion of available genetic sequence information for a variety of organisms, there has been a similar increase in the information available related to the functional roles of proteins in metabolism. Many databases exist that provide rich sources of information for the constituent genes and reactions in the metabolisms of many organisms. This information has the potential to lead to more insight into the functional mechanisms of cellular metabolism. By developing a flexible method for comparing metabolic processes among different organisms, new insight into their functional mechanisms and evolutionary relationships may be uncovered. 

PWComp provides an interface for users to investigate the similarity between metabolic pathways contained in the BioCyc database. It implements the graph comparative algorithm described by Heymans and Singh (see documentation) that computes a similarity score using the similarity between nodes of the 'metabolic graph' and the structure of the nodes' connections.

PWComp consists of three major components, each written in Java: (1) A set of data structures that contain information about the pathways and their constituent components (2) a computational engine that executes the Heymans Algorithm, and (3) a GUI that allows the user to navigate the database of information and the similarity measurements between pathways.