The System Biology Markup Language (SBML) is a useful format specification for exchanging models of networks of biochemical systems. SBML files can contain information about regulatory, metabolic, or signaling processes.

A Common Lisp "binding" is a desirable thing, as the language offers numerous advantages for generic bioinformatics programming.

SBML is based on XML and therefore is relatively language-neutral. Nevertheless, the main language binding for SBML, libsbml, is based on C/C++. Language bindings for Python, and Perl are available, as well as Java.

A SBML Common Lisp binding is also available which directly binds libsbml via UFFI. This binding postdates the code presented here.

However, having a pure CL implementation of SBML available in a read/write library is still a desirable thing. The main motivations are the justification of the SBML specification itself, and, of course, the independence of the CL code from foreign language libraries. In particular, the existence of "good" SBML libraries other than libsbml, does demonstrate the validity of the the contents of the specification, i.e. it demonstrates that the specification is both truly language independent and well formulated.

http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-sbml