CAZypedia needs your help! We have many unassigned GH, PL, CE, AA, GT, and CBM pages in need of Authors and Responsible Curators.
Scientists at all career stages, including students, are welcome to contribute to CAZypedia. Read more here, and in the 10th anniversary article in Glycobiology.
New to the CAZy classification? Read this first.
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Consider attending the 15th Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting in Ghent, 5-8 May 2024.
Template:News
7 January 2015: Love your guts: CAZypedia is ringing in the new year with a new Glycoside Hydrolase Family 76 page by Spencer Williams. GH76 contains endo-acting α-mannanases, including members from the human gut bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron that enable us to degrade yeast mannans in our diet. A very recent, seminal publication Nature, notably involving CAZypedia contributors Wade Abbott, Al Boraston, Gideon Davies, Harry Gilbert, Michael Suits, and Spencer Williams, has recently shed new like on the structure and mechanism of these enzymes. Read more here!
11 September 2014: Another PL family done: Today, Richard McLean and Wade Abbott finished the Polysaccharide Lyase Family 22 page, bringing the number of Curator Approved PL pages in CAZypedia to a total of 5 (of 23). PL22 is a family of bacterial (and a handful of archeal) oligogalacturonide lyases (OGLs), archetypal members of which are highly specific for digalacturonate and Δ4,5-unsaturated digalacturonate i.e., they do not cleave polymeric α-(1,4)-linked galacturonan, a component of pectin. Wade performed a seminal crystallographic analysis of PL22, and he and Richard have produced a lucid distillation of the mechanism of catalysis in this family. Read more here!
9 September 2014: 2-for-1 Back to School Special: With the start of the new academic year, we are happy to report that two new Polysaccharide Lyase Family pages have recently been completed and given Curator Approved status. In August, Naotake Konno and Shinya Fushinobu produced the Polysaccharide Lyase Family 20 page, which describes this small (currently, 18 member) group of bacterial and fungal beta-(1-4)-glucuronan-cleaving enzymes. And, on the 7th of this month, Sine Larsen and Leila LoLeggio composed the Polysaccharide Lyase Family 4 page. Currently, PL4 is only known to contain rhamnogalacturonan lyases involved in pectin degradation, notably including many plant sequences in addition to bacterial and fungal members. We thank these Authors and Responsible Curators for their contributions and encourage our readers to check out these new pages.
2 July 2014: More on the alpha-amylase clan: We are pleased to report that Stefan Janecek has made another key contribution to CAZypedia by completing the Glycoside Hydrolase Family 77 page today. GH77 contains enzymes variously known as amylomaltases, 4-α-glucanotransferases, or disproportionating enzymes (D-enzymes in plants), which catalyze (1-4)-to-(1-4) transglycosylation of alpha-glucan chains and form part of the starch/glycogen debranching system. Together with GH13 and GH70, GH77 constitutes Clan GH-H, a clan of alpha-glucan-specific enzymes united by a common (β/α)8 catalytic domain fold. Stefan is the founder and main organiser of ALAMY - the international symposia on the alpha-amylase enzyme family - and has been a key person in producing the GH13, GH70, GH77 pages in CAZypedia; we are especially grateful for all his hard work and expertise!
23 June 2014: "LysM" domains in CAZypedia: The cohort of Carbohydrate Binding Module Families covered in CAZypedia continues to grow with the completion of the Carbohydrate Binding Module Family 50 by Takayuki Ohnuma and Toki Taira. CBM50 members are also known as LysM domains, which are found in a range of enzymes beyond glycoside hydrolases, including proteases, in which they are believed to facilitate targeting and degradation the bacterial cell wall. Read more here...!