title: GlycomeDB - integration of open-access carbohydrate structure databases.
abstract: 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 Database (BCSDB). We have created a new database called GlycomeDB, containing all structures, their taxonomic annotations and references (IDs) for the original databases. More than 100000 datasets were imported, resulting in more than 33000 unique sequences now encoded in GlycomeDB using the universal format GlycoCT. Inconsistencies were found in all public databases, which were discussed and corrected in multiple feedback rounds with the responsible curators.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  GlycomeDB is a new, publicly available database for carbohydrate sequences with a unified, all-encompassing structure encoding format and NCBI taxonomic referencing. The database is updated weekly and can be downloaded free of charge. The JAVA application GlycoUpdateDB is also available for establishing and updating a local installation of GlycomeDB. With the advent of GlycomeDB, the distributed islands of knowledge in glycomics are now bridged to form a single resource.
authors.affiliation: German Cancer Research Center DKFZ, Core Facility Molecular Structural Analysis, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, Heidelberg, Germany. r.ranzinger@dkfz.de
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ranzinger
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Herget
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wetter
authors.forename: Claus-Wilhelm
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: von der Lieth
mesh_terms: D050260:Carbohydrate Metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D002240:Carbohydrate Sequence; D002241:Carbohydrates / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000145:classification; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface
chemical_list: D002241:Carbohydrates