CAZy is a database of Carbohydrate-Active enZYmes. This database contains a classification and associated information about enyzmes involved in the synthesis, metabolism, and transport of carbohydrate

Carbohydrate

A carbohydrate is an organic compound with the empirical formula ; that is, consists only of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with a hydrogen:oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 . However, there are exceptions to this. One common example would be deoxyribose, a component of DNA, which has the empirical...

s. Included in this database are glycoside hydrolase

Glycoside hydrolase

Glycoside hydrolases catalyze the hydrolysis of the glycosidic linkage to release smaller sugars...

s, glycosyltransferase

Glycosyltransferase

Glycosyltransferases are enzymes that act as a catalyst for the transfer of a monosaccharide unit from an activated nucleotide sugar to a glycosyl acceptor molecule, usually an alcohol....

s, polysaccharide lyase

Lyase

In biochemistry, a lyase is an enzyme that catalyzes the breaking of various chemical bonds by means other than hydrolysis and oxidation, often forming a new double bond or a new ring structure...

s, carbohydrate esterase

Esterase

An esterase is a hydrolase enzyme that splits esters into an acid and an alcohol in a chemical reaction with water called hydrolysis.A wide range of different esterases exist that differ in their substrate specificity, their protein structure, and their biological function.- EC classification/list...

 and carbohydrate-binding families.

Classification

CAZy identifies evolutionary related families of glycosyl hydrolases using the classification introduced by Bernard Henrissat. As of 2011 CAZy contains 125 families of glycosyl hydrolase families. These families are given a number to identify them, so for example Glycosyl hydrolase family 1 contains enzymes that possess a TIM barrel

TIM barrel

The TIM barrel is a conserved protein fold consisting of eight α-helices and eight parallel β-strands that alternate along the peptide backbone. The structure is named after triosephosphate isomerase, a conserved glycolytic enzyme. TIM barrels are quite common among the conserved protein folds...

fold. These families are clustered into 14 different clans that share structural similarity. CAZy contains 94 families of Glycosyl transferase enzymes, 22 families of polysaccharide lysases and 16 families of carbohydrate esterases.