Today, as the large international genome sequence projects are gaining a great amount of public attention and huge sequence data bases are created it be comes 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 sub ject to experimental conditions. Nevertheless a systematic collection is essential for our interpretation of the genome information and more so for possible appli cations of that knowledge in the fields of medicine, agriculture, etc .. Recent pro gress on enzyme immobilization, enzyme production, enzyme inhibition, coen zyme regeneration and enzyme engineering has opened up fascinating new fields for the potential application of enzymes in a large range of different areas. It is the functional profile of an enzyme that enables a biologist of physician to analyze a metabolic pathway and its disturbance; it is the substrate specificity of an enzyme which tells an analytical biochemist how to design an assay; it is the stability, specificity and efficiency of an enzyme which determines its usefulness in the biotechnical transformation of a molecule. And the sum of all these data will have to be considered when the designer of artificial biocatalysts has to choose the optimum prototype to start with.

This collection of datasheets was generated from the database "BRENDA"

Enzymes are applied in organic synthesis and in analytical chemistry, in industrial production processes of pharmaceuticals and in food processing. Finding a suitable enzyme for a desired transformation or with a de- fined specificity is not always an easy task. More than 3000 enzymes are well described to date. The Enzyme Handbook provides all the information for selecting the proper enzyme to perform defined transformations in a given environment. The Enzyme Handbook devotes a variable number of pages for each enzyme, depending on the amount of information available with the EC number as ordering criterion within a volume. Revised data sheets can be released for individual enzymes and newly characterized enzymes and they can easily be sorted into the binders at the appropriate place. Each data sheet is divided into 7 sections: - Nomenclature (EC number, Systematic name, Recom- mended name, Synonyms, CAS Reg. No.) - Reaction and specificity (Catalysed reaction, Reaction type, Natural substrates, Substrate spectrum, Product spectrum, Inhibitors, Cofactors/prosthetic groups, Metal compounds/salts, Turnover number, Specific activity, KM-value, pH-optimum, pH-range, Tem- perature optimum, Temperature range) - Enzyme structure (Molecular weight, Subunits, Glyco-/Lipoprotein) - Isolation/Preparation (Source organism, Source tissue, Localisation in source, Purification, Crystallization, Cloned, Renatured) - Stability (pH, Temperature, Oxidation, Organic sol- vent, General stability information, Storage) - Cross-References (to Structure Data Banks) - Literature references

Today, as the large international genome sequence projects are gaining a great amount of public attention and huge sequence data bases are created it be comes 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 sub ject to experimental conditions. Nevertheless a systematic collection is essential for our interpretation of the genome information and more so for possible appli cations of that knowledge in the fields of medicine, agriculture, etc .. Recent pro gress on enzyme immobilization, enzyme production, enzyme inhibition, coen zyme regeneration and enzyme engineering has opened up fascinating new fields for the potential application of enzymes in a large range of different areas. It is the functional profile of an enzyme that enables a biologist of physician to analyze a metabolic pathway and its disturbance; it is the substrate specificity of an enzyme which tells an analytical biochemist how to design an assay; it is the stability, specificity and efficiency of an enzyme which determines its usefulness in the biotechnical transformation of a molecule. And the sum of all these data will have to be considered when the designer of artificial biocatalysts has to choose the optimum prototype to start with.

Includes nomenclature, reactions and specificity, enzyme structure, isolation / preparation, stability, cross references to structure databanks, and literature references for each enzyme.

EC 2.1 - EC 2.3.1 for EC 2.3.2 see Vol. 12