There exist other databases (e.g. BRENDA ( Scheer et al., 2011), UniProtKB ( The UniProt Consortium, 2011), BioModels ( Le Novère et al., 2006), JWS Online ( Olivier and

Snoep, 2004)) that contain kinetic data, but the focus of these is different. SABIO-RK comprises all available kinetic parameters from a selected publication together with their corresponding rate equations, as well as kinetic laws and parameter types and environmental conditions (pH, temperature, and buffer) under which the kinetic data were measured. Biochemical reactions are defined by their reaction participants (substrates, products), Tacrolimus manufacturer modifiers (inhibitors, activators, cofactors), as well as detailed information about the proteins catalysing the reactions (e.g. EC enzyme classification, UniProtKB accession numbers, protein complex composition of the active enzyme, isozymes, wild-type/mutant information) and their biological source (organism, tissue/cell type, cell location). A strong feature of the database is that not only standard biochemical reactions are provided but also alternative reactions

with partly artificial substrates if they are used for the measurement. Therefore, only about learn more 50% of the reactions in SABIO-RK match the original Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) (Kanehisa et al., 2010)) reaction identifier. The same holds true for chemical compounds: about 30% of the SABIO-RK compounds are linked to the corresponding Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) (de Matos et al., 2010) identifier and more than 70% to the

KEGG compound identifier. The additional storage of alternative reactions containing artificial substrates provides valuable Tangeritin information for the deduction of the enzymatic activity in vivo. There are two sources for the kinetic data stored in SABIO-RK, scientific articles and wet-lab experiments. Literature-based data are inserted using a web-based, password-protected input interface (Rojas et al., 2007). Students or experts in biology first read the paper and insert the data in a temporary database via this input interface. The interface offers selection lists of controlled vocabularies and search functions for already available data in the database in order to facilitate correct data entries. Furthermore, constraints are implemented for both structuring and controlling the inserted data. To reduce errors and inconsistencies these constraints include data format checking and alignments with regard to the content entered before. After information extraction by student helpers, the same input interface is used by SABIO-RK database curators to validate inserted data and to align them to SABIO-RK data standards. Data from wet-lab experiments can directly be submitted to SABIO-RK using a XML-based SabioML format (Swainston et al., 2010).