LeishCyc

LeishCyc is the database of metabolic pathways for Leishmania, developed at the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute, University of Melbourne (see LeishCyc team). LeishCyc currently contains 8304 polypeptides, 1043 enzymatic reactions, 811 enzymes, and 785 compounds assembled into 214 metabolic pathways. To to access the database follow the link to the LeishCyc Query Page. The dump of internal database files can be downloaded from here: LeishCyc database dump.

Goals

LeishCyc is an integrated knowledge base of Leishmania which aims to comprehensively describe all chemical entities involved in Leishmania cellular processes (metabolites, proteins, enzymes, and parent genes), as well as their interactions. LeishCyc initial build was based on the genomic data provided by the Leishmania major Friedlin Genome Project from the Sanger Institute.

Metabolic database is necessary to support metabolomic studies and for the interpretation of metabolomic data in the cellular context. For example, given metabolite may be found in multiple metabolic pathways and therefore the interpretation of the change in its flux or steady-state concentration requires analysis of multiple metabolic pathways. Due to inherent complexity of the metabolic networks and unique features of each particular organism this is increasingly difficult to achieve without the support of an expert knowledge-base. The goal of the LeishCyc project is to provide a consistent framework for effective management of the information obtained from metabolomic and bioinformatics studies, as well as the medium for the disemination of this information to other researchers.