RHEA - Reaction fingerprints

The fingerprint of a reaction is computed (by the Java code) after its participants (i.e. compound IDs and coefficients) and direction.
It is checked overnight by the quality checker script (cron job), which also fixes it in case a bug introduced inconsistencies in the database.
Please refer also to the javadocs for updated documentation on fingerprint generation.

Imagine the simple reaction

A + B => C + D

Its fingerprint could be something like this:

1[2222]+1[3333]=>1[4444]+1[5555]

, being 2222 the internal compound ID of A and so on.
The fingerprint is normalized in order to make it unique:

  • participants on the same side are ordered
  • sides are ordered, and the direction symbol changed accordingly if necessary

So the following equations would have exactly the same fingerprint that the example above:

B + A => D + C
C + D <= A + B