GlycomeDB - integration of open-access carbohydrate structure databases

Background: Although carbohydrates are the third major class of biological macromolecules, after proteins and DNA, there is neither a comprehensive database for carbohydrate structures nor an established universal structure encoding scheme for computational purposes. Funding for further development of the Complex Carbohydrate Structure Database (CCSD or CarbBank) ceased in 1997, and since then several initiatives have developed independent databases with partially overlapping foci. For each database, different encoding schemes for residues and sequence topology were designed. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to obtain an overview of all deposited structures or to compare the contents of the various databases. Results: We have implemented procedures which download the structures contained in the seven major databases, e.g. GLYCOSCIENCES.de, the Consortium for Functional Glycomics (CFG), the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and the Bacterial Carbohydrate Structure Dat...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: René Ranzinger, Stephan Herget, Thomas Wetter, Claus-Wilhelm von der Lieth
• Keywords: BMCBI 2008, Carbohydrate Structure, Carbohydrate Structure Database, Database