The BRENDA enzyme database is the main enzyme and enzyme-ligand information system. The aim of the webinar is to give an introduction to BRENDA to scientists across all disciplines within the life sciences, to learn and understand the history, scope, content, data sources, and organisation of the database and how to work with the tools in diverse application areas.

About BRENDA

Established in 1987, BRENDA provides full information on:

classified enzymes and their function, metabolic role, structure and specificity,
tools for exploring pathways,
linking metabolomic data to biochemical pathways,
tools for exploring the functional properties of enzyme-like active sites, and
substrate-enzyme interactions.

BRENDA provides continuity and reliable data, continuous curation and updating with information on existing enzymes and the integration of newly discovered enzymes. Enzymes, representing the largest and by far most complex group of proteins, play an essential role in all processes of life, including metabolism, gene expression, cell division, the immune system, and others. Their function, also connected to most diseases or stress control makes them interesting targets for research and applications in biotechnology, medical treatments, or diagnosis.

BRENDA provides more than 4 million data entries for ~90,000 enzymes from ~13,000 organisms, manually evaluated and extracted from ~157,000 primary literature references, combined with information by text and data mining, data integration and prediction algorithms. Supplements comprise disease-related data, protein sequences, 3D structures, predicted enzyme locations and genome annotations. Their functional parameters and other properties are collected, integrated, and made available to the scientific community. 

In 2018 BRENDA was appointed to ELIXIR Core Data Resource with fundamental importance to biological and biomedical research and long-term preservation of biological data. BRENDA is part of the de.NBI, the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure and the ELIXIR Germany Node, in the service Center for Biological Data (BioData). A main goal of de.NBI is to provide excellent bioinformatics services and resources for life sciences research in academia and industry.