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CAZypedia has been initiated as a community-driven resource to assemble a comprehensive encyclopedia of the "CAZymes," the carbohydrate-active enzymes and binding proteins involved in the synthesis and degradation of complex carbohydrates. CAZypedia is inspired by, and closely connected with, the actively curated CAZy Database.
It's probably fair to say that CAZypedians are, like our friends at the CAZy DB, a group of "biocurators."

CAZypedia is presently focussed on the Glycoside Hydrolase Families defined in the CAZy Database. Other catabolic and anabolic CAZymes, as well as carbohydrate-binding modules, may be included in the future. In addition, there is a lexicon of terms relevant to CAZymes and carbohydrate chemistry.
These and other aspects of CAZypedia's content can be accessed through the menus on the left side of each page.

CAZypedia is built on authoring and editing principles similar to those of other expert-based online encyclopedias (cf. Citizendium). All contributors to CAZypedia, from the Authors to the Board of Curators, are selected experts in the field. Transparency is achieved through the use of contributors' real names and published biographies in CAZypedia. Individual entries in CAZypedia are managed by Responsible Curators, who are responsible for selecting expert Authors and coordinating author contributions on individual pages. Selection of Responsible Curators, based on their specialist expertise and ability to participate in the active maintenance of entry content, is handled by the Senior Curators.
More information on CAZypedia's content and editorial policies is available here.

If you would like to contact the Board of Curators to get involved with CAZypedia or suggest an improvement, please use this form.

11 Jan 2012: New for the new year: CAZypedia is proud to report that our first new page of 2012, the Glycoside Hydrolase Family 99 page, has been completed by Spencer Williams and given Curator Approved status today. This page follows the recent publication of seminal structural and mechanistic analyses by a multi-investigator team including CAZypedia Curators Spencer Williams and Gideon Davies, which suggests that endo-mannosidases of this family may use an unusual mechanism involving a 1,2-anhydro-β-

mannopyranose ("sugar epoxide") intermediate to effect the release of Glc_1–3-1,3-α-Man oligosaccharides during N-glycan trimming. GH99 is a small, but nonetheless important family, whose members come from both higher eukaryotes, which employ these enzymes in protein-folding quality-control, and bacteria, which are likely to use their homologues for carbohydrate scavenging in niche enviroments such as the human gut.

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Also in the news: Spencer altered us to the fact that CAZypedia has clocked one million page views sometime recently. We're not quite sure what to make of that, but it seems like a pretty neat achievement. What is really interesting is that we are starting to see some dynamics in which pages are accessed most: Newer pages, such as GH18 (completed Oct. 2010), are becoming more popular than the very first CAZypedia page, GH1 (completed May 2007). And, some of the Lexicon pages, including those on the Cellulosome and anomeric configuration are right up there in the list. If you like to keep score, here's a list of our most popular pages. Want to find out when a particular CAZypedia page was Curator Approved? Click here.

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