CAZypedia:History

This page presents a brief history of the key milestones in the development of CAZypedia. For a general introduction to CAZypedia, please see the "About" page. For a detailed overview of recent developments, please see the News page or the Recent Changes page.

All CAZypedians are welcomed to contribute to this document and correct any errors or omissions.

---

July 2006

The idea to produce a comprehesive encyclopedia of carbohydrate-active enzymes as a printed volume is raised by Prof. Bruce Stone at the XXIIIrd International Carbohydrate Symposium in Whistler, Canada (July 23-28). Among others, Steve Withers, Gideon Davies, David Vocadlo, and Harry Brumer were involved in this informal discussion.

April 2007

In a group discussion at the 7th Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting, held in Braunschweig, Germany (April 22-25), the suggestion was put forward that Bruce's encyclopedia might be better served online, due to the rapid nature of developments in the field. "CAZypedia" was suggested as a dynamic, wiki-based solution to this issue.

May 2007

Harry Brumer begins setting-up CAZypedia using Mediawiki, the software that runs Wikipedia. Pages on Glycoside Hydrolase Families GH1, GH2, GH10, GH11 by Steve Withers and GH36 and GH27 by Harry Brumer were initiated and completed shortly thereafter with editing help by Bernard Henrissat (see page histories here: GH1, GH2, GH10, GH11, GH36, GH27).

05 October 2008

A contemporary review of the CAZy Database by Bernard Henrissat, Pedro Coutinho, and colleagues appears online in Nucleic Acids Research [1]. This paper is the first to mention CAZypedia in the printed scientific literature, if only briefly.

June 2009

At the 2009 Gordon Research Conference on Carbohydrates (June 14-19) Bernard Henrissat and Steve Withers take primary responsibility for drafting a table of Responsible Curators for the first round of invitations to contribute to CAZypedia, with input and approval from other Senior Curators Harry Gilbert, Gideon Davies, Alisdair Boraston and Harry Brumer. On June 22, the first invitation letter is sent out to 29 scientists in the field, covering 69 Glycoside Hydrolase Families. The original spreadsheet eventually becomes the table of Assigned Pages on CAZypedia.

30 July 2009

CAZypedia is presented at the 2009 Gordon Research Conference on Cellulosomes, Cellulases & Other Carbohydrate Modifying Enzymes by Harry Brumer, with support from Harry Gilbert and Bernard Henrissat. This is the first public launch of CAZypedia to the CAZyme community at large.

15 April 2010

CAZypedia's first foray into glycosyltransferase families begins with Warren Wakarchuk's Glycosyltransferase Family 42 page.

27 October 2011

CAZypedia is presented by Senior Curator Harry Brumer as part of a series of talks for Open Access Week at the University of British Columbia. This is the first presentation of CAZypedia for a wider, non-specialist audience. A video recording of this presentation, which includes a discussion of CAZypedia's genesis and evolution, is openly available via the cIRcle repository (click on the video link view in browser or download the entire 325Mb video in WMV format; the CAZypedia presentation is at running time 37:00-55:50). The corresponding presentation slides are also available via cIRcle, and can be read independently of the video.

22 May 2013

Ushering in a new phase in CAZypedia's development, Author Elizabeth Ficko-Blean and Senior Curator Alisdair Boraston finalize CAZypedia's first Carbohydrate Binding Module Family page, CBM32. Concomitantly, Alicia Lammerts van Bueren starts crafting an extensive Lexicon entry on CBMs .

28 June 2013

CAZypedia gets an additional nod in the formal literature, in a review by Shinya Fushinobu, Victor Alves, and Pedro Coutinho in Current Opinion in Structural Biology [2].

19 September 2013

CAZypedia begins to encompass the Auxiliary Activity Families with the completion of the AA9 lytic polysaccharide mono-oxygenase (LPMO) page by Paul Harris.

30 September 2013

Yet another new phase in CAZypedia's development begins with the completion of the first Polysaccharide Lyase Family page, PL2, by Wade Abbott. This follows an initiative spearheaded by Wade Abbott and Michael Suits at the 2013 Cellulosomes, Cellulases & Other Carbohydrate Modifying Enzymes Gordon Research Conference to cover all the PL Families in CAZypedia.

21 November 2013

The CAZy team kindly mentions CAZypedia in their 2013 update in Nucleic Acids Research [3].

28 July 2014

CAZypedia marks the key milestone of 100 Curator Approved Glycoside Hydrolase Family pages, thanks to the completion of the Glycoside Hydrolase Family 12 page by Gerlind Sulzenbacher.

11 October 2017

The CAZypedia Consortium publishes an article in Glycobiology to celebrate CAZypedia's 10th anniversary online, entitled "Ten years of CAZypedia: A living encyclopedia of carbohydrate-active enzymes." In addition to the published journal article [4], a post-print version (final accepted manuscript) will be freely available. This article was written by Harry Brumer and Spencer Williams, with input from Birte Svensson, Bernard Henrissat, Gideon Davies, Harry Gilbert, Anthony Clarke, Warren Wakarchuk, Wade Abbott, David Vocadlo, Elizabeth Ficko-Blean, Alisdair Boraston, Antoni Planas, and Shinya Fushinobu, on behalf of all of CAZypedia's present and future Contributors.

4 February 2019

A new milestone in CAZypedia's development was reached today with the completion of the first Carbohydrate Esterase Family page, CE4, by Author Alex Anderson and Responsible Curator Michael Suits.

---

References

1. Cantarel BL, Coutinho PM, Rancurel C, Bernard T, Lombard V, and Henrissat B. (2009). The Carbohydrate-Active EnZymes database (CAZy): an expert resource for Glycogenomics. Nucleic Acids Res. 2009;37(Database issue):D233-8. DOI:10.1093/nar/gkn663 |
2. Fushinobu S, Alves VD, and Coutinho PM. (2013). Multiple rewards from a treasure trove of novel glycoside hydrolase and polysaccharide lyase structures: new folds, mechanistic details, and evolutionary relationships. Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2013;23(5):652-9. DOI:10.1016/j.sbi.2013.06.001 |
3. Lombard V, Golaconda Ramulu H, Drula E, Coutinho PM, and Henrissat B. (2014). The carbohydrate-active enzymes database (CAZy) in 2013. Nucleic Acids Res. 2014;42(Database issue):D490-5. DOI:10.1093/nar/gkt1178 |
4. CAZypedia Consortium (2018). Ten years of CAZypedia: a living encyclopedia of carbohydrate-active enzymes. Glycobiology. 2018;28(1):3-8. DOI:10.1093/glycob/cwx089 |