The multimer glyphs do not bring any additional expressivity compared to the complex glyph (see below), so they are not really necessary.
Moreover, they are confusing: in PD, it was informally decided for L1V2.0 that the label and state variables of a multimer would relate to the multimer and not to its subunits, but there may still be some maps out there where it is not the case; and it seems not to be the case in CellDesigner, where the state variables are represented for each subunit (although this might not always be what curators trully want to represent).
Finally, from the point of view of tool development, they are difficult to draw correctly, and are often drawn by superposing two shapes, which prevents multimers from being transparent, for example. Also, it is difficult to compute their border.
Target
PD
Issue type
New feature
New feature
New feature description
Remove the multimer glyphs
Motivation
The multimer glyphs do not bring any additional expressivity compared to the complex glyph (see below), so they are not really necessary.
Moreover, they are confusing: in PD, it was informally decided for L1V2.0 that the label and state variables of a multimer would relate to the multimer and not to its subunits, but there may still be some maps out there where it is not the case; and it seems not to be the case in CellDesigner, where the state variables are represented for each subunit (although this might not always be what curators trully want to represent). Finally, from the point of view of tool development, they are difficult to draw correctly, and are often drawn by superposing two shapes, which prevents multimers from being transparent, for example. Also, it is difficult to compute their border.
Suggested level and version
Level: 2 Version: