Implementation of SBML-JSON converter and SBML-JSON scheme

<p>The Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) is the main language for representation and exchange of computational models in biology. JSON is the main data format of the web. Currently, many issues exist with the JSON representation of SBML used by tools like cobrapy, escher, ModelPolisher or the BiGG database.</p> <p>The idea of this project is to update the JSON scheme to have a full coverage of features important for constraint-based methods, i.e. SBML core and the additional SBML packages fbc and groups. In addition, existing issues related to SBML-JSON will be solved. The project will be implemented as part of cobrapy with main focus on the following:</p> <ol> <li>Annotation and meta-data support will be implemented</li> <li>Validation of JSON-SBML files will be performed</li> <li>Roundtripping SBML-JSON-SBML without information loss will be implemented</li> <li>JSON (SBML) scheme and scheme validation will be implemented</li> </ol> <p>Hence, a full-featured JSON exchange format for SBML will improve the web-integration and exchange of SBML models on web.</p>