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Welcome to CAZypedia! The Living Encyclopedia of Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes. Now containing the following Curator Approved content: 128 Glycoside Hydrolase (GH) Family pages, 12 Polysaccharide Lyase (PL) Family pages, 7 Auxiliary Activity (AA) Family pages, 3 Glycosyltransferase (GT) Family pages, 47 Carbohydrate Binding Module (CBM) Family pages, and 24 Lexicon pages!

Purpose CAZypedia has been initiated as a community-driven resource to assemble a comprehensive encyclopedia of the "CAZymes," the carbohydrate-active enzymes and associated carbohydrate-binding modules 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." If you are new to the CAZyme classification, "Sorting the Diverse" by Professors Gideon Davies and Michael Sinnott (The Biochemist, 2008, vol. 30, part 4, pp. 26-32) provides an excellent introduction and historical perspective. Content CAZypedia initially focussed on the Glycoside Hydrolase Families defined in the CAZy Database, and we continue to strive for complete coverage of this diverse class of enzymes. Other catabolic and anabolic CAZymes, as well as Auxiliary redox enzymes and non-catalytic Carbohydrate Binding Modules, continue to be incorporated as interest and engagement from the scientific community grows. 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. How CAZypedia works CAZypedia is built on authoring and editing principles similar to those of other expert-based online encyclopedias (cf. Citizendium, Scholarpedia). All contributors to CAZypedia, from the Authors to the Board of Curators, are 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. A short lecture and a set of slides presenting CAZypedia are freely available here. An article describing CAZypedia's genesis and evolution has been published in the journal Glycobiology. Contact If you would like to get involved with CAZypedia or suggest an improvement, please contact the Board of Curators.

Latest news 25 November 2021 Something to CRO about!: In our latest Curator Approved page in a while, Maria Cleveland has written an extensive history of the Copper Radical Oxidases (CROs) that constitute Auxiliary Activity Family 5. The archetypal AA5 CRO is the Fusarium graminearum galactose oxidase, which was first isolated in the 1950s, provided the first 3-D structure in the 1990s, and has been the subject of numerous mechanistic studies up through the new millennium. AA5 also contains the glyoxal oxidases, which were discovered in Wisconsin in the late 1980s and form their own subfamily. More recent work by Maria, Yann Mathieu, and others has shown that a wider range of substrate specificities exists in this family than previously anticipated, while the catalytic flexibility of wild-type and mutant enzymes has spurred numerous biotech applications. Slide on over to the AA5 page, which includes a deep reference list, to learn more about these interesting enzymes! 23 June 2021 A free CAZypedia webinar: Check out the presentation on CAZypedia by Senior Curator Elizabeth Ficko-Blean, which was part of a webinar on Recent Advances in Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes organized by Stefan Janecek. Stefan also gave a talk on alpha-amylase bioinformatics, and Nicolas Terrapon gave an overview of the CAZy database in a presentation entitled "Carbohydrate-Active EnZymes Annotation in the High-Throughput Era". More information on the webinar can be found here, and you can watch all three lectures for free on YouTube. 31 May 2021 Celebrating CAZy: The B.A. Stone Award for Excellence in Plant Polysaccharide Biochemistry was awarded to CAZy founder Bernard Henrissat today. CAZy, CAZypedia, and Prof. Bruce Stone have a long, intertwined history, and today we celebrate Bernie's insight to create a sequence-based classification of the Carbohydrate-Active EnZymes, starting with the cellulases. > older news

Dedication CAZypedia is dedicated to the late Prof. Bruce Stone, whose enthusiasm to create a comprehensive encyclopedia of carbohydrate-active enzymes was essential in the genesis of this project.