Fig. 1

From biological knowledge to systemic description: Identification of the entities of interest for the process of initiation of translation in prokaryotes on a representative figure extracted from Wikimedia. Entities for systemic model design are marked by the following symbols: title (t); arrows divided in bifid at origin or head (a) or divided in more than two parts (a*) or closing cycle (dotted); shapes (s) with legend or label (l). Depending on their relative position regarding arrows (origins or heads), three types of biological entities (BioE) are identified (i, f, c): an unframed BioE at arrow-origins (i) represents an initial reactant of a process (input); an unframed BioE at arrow-heads (f) represents a final product of a process (output); a framed BioE (c) represents a product (output) of a process that is the reactant (input) of the next process, and thus that consumed BioE