BRENDA is the main collection of enzyme functional data available to the scientific community. It is available free of charge for via the internet (www.brenda-enzymes.org) and as an in-house database for commercial users (requests to our distributor Biobase).
Today, as the large international genome sequence projects are gaining a great amount of public attention and huge sequence data bases are created, it becomes more and more obvious that we are very limited in our ability to access functional data for the gene products - the proteins, in particular for enzymes. Those data are inherently very difficult to collect, interpret and standardize as they are highly distributed among journals from different fields and are often subject to experimental conditions. Nevertheless a systematic collection is essential for our interpretation of the genome information and more so for possible applications of this knowledge in the fields of medicine, agriculture, etc. Recent progress on enzyme immobilisation, enzyme production, enzyme inhibition, coenzyme regeneration and enzyme engineering has opened up fascinating new fields for the potential application of enzymes in a large range of different areas.
The enzymes are classified according to the Enzyme Commission list of enzymes. Some 5000 "different" enzymes are covered. Frequently enzymes with very different properties are included under the same EC number. Although we intend to give a representative overview on the characteristics and variability of each enzyme the Handbook is not a compendium. The reader will have to go to the primary literature for more detailed information. Naturally it is not possible to cover all the numerous literature references for each enzyme (for some enzymes up to 40000) if the data representation is to be concise as is intended. Currently about 200 EC classes display a "B" in the 4th position of the EC number. A part of these enzymes is in the reviewing process of the enzyme commission of the IUBMB and awaiting their EC numbers. Another part is waiting for more data which are a prerequisite for being proposed to the IUBMB (e.g. a description of the purificatin procedure). Incompletely classified "B-enzymes" (preliminary BRENDA-supplied EC numbers) mostly fill gaps in otherwise established pathways.
The data collection is being developed into a metabolic network information system with links to Enzyme expression and regulation information.
