CAZy was established in 1999 in order to provide online and constantly updated access to the
protein sequence-based family classification of CAZymes,[1] which was originally developed in early 1990s to classify the
glycoside hydrolases.[9] New entries are added shortly after they appear in the daily releases of
GenBank. The rapid evolution of high-throughput
DNA sequencing has resulted in the continuing exponential growth of the CAZy database,[1][2][9] which now covers hundreds of thousands of sequences.[10] CAZy continues to be curated and developed by the Glycogenomics group at AFMB, a research centre affiliated with the
French National Centre for Scientific Research and
Aix-Marseille University.[11][12]
The CAZy database is coupled with CAZypedia, which was launched in 2007 as a research community-driven,
wiki-based encyclopedia of CAZymes.[13]
Classification
CAZy identifies evolutionarily related families of glycosyl hydrolases using the classification introduced by Bernard Henrissat.[3][9][14] These families are given a number to identify them, so for example
Glycosyl hydrolase family 1 contains enzymes that possess a
TIM barrel fold. These families are clustered into 14 different clans that share structural similarity. CAZy contains 94 families of Glycosyl transferase enzymes,[4] 22 families of polysaccharide lysases[5] and 16 families of carbohydrate esterases.
^
abHenrissat, B.; Davies, G. (1997). "Structural and sequence-based classification of glycoside hydrolases". Current Opinion in Structural Biology. 7 (5): 637–644.
doi:
10.1016/S0959-440X(97)80072-3.
PMID9345621.
^
abCoutinho, P. M.; Deleury, E.; Davies, G. J.; Henrissat, B. (2003). "An evolving hierarchical family classification for glycosyltransferases". Journal of Molecular Biology. 328 (2): 307–317.
doi:
10.1016/S0022-2836(03)00307-3.
PMID12691742.