BRENDA: a resource for enzyme data and metabolic information (original) (raw)

From The Enzyme List to Pathways and Back Again

2008

The IUBMB Enzyme List is widely used by other databases as a source for avoiding ambiguity in the recognition of enzymes as catalytic entities. However, it was never designed for activities such as pathway tracing, which have become increasingly important in systems biology. This is because it often relies on generic or representative reactions to show the reactions catalysed by enzymes of wide specificity. It is necessary to go to databases such as BRENDA to find further, more detailed, information on what is known about the range of substrates for any particular enzyme. In order to provide a framework for tracing pathways involving any specific enzyme or metabolite, we have created a Reactions Database from the material in the Enzyme list. This allows reactions to be searched by substrate/product and pathways to be traced from any selected starting/seed substrate. An extensive synonym glossary allows searches by any of the alternative names, including accepted abbreviations, by wh...