Department of Bioinformatics and Biochemistry, Technical University Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2010 Jan 29;6(1):e1000661. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000661.
A wide range of research areas in molecular biology and medical biochemistry require a reliable enzyme classification system, e.g., drug design, metabolic network reconstruction and system biology. When research scientists in the above mentioned areas wish to unambiguously refer to an enzyme and its function, the EC number introduced by the Nomenclature Committee of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) is used. However, each and every one of these applications is critically dependent upon the consistency and reliability of the underlying data for success. We have developed tools for the validation of the EC number classification scheme. In this paper, we present validated data of 3788 enzymatic reactions including 229 sub-subclasses of the EC classification system. Over 80% agreement was found between our assignment and the EC classification. For 61 (i.e., only 2.5%) reactions we found that their assignment was inconsistent with the rules of the nomenclature committee; they have to be transferred to other sub-subclasses. We demonstrate that our validation results can be used to initiate corrections and improvements to the EC number classification scheme.
分子生物学和医学生物化学的众多研究领域都需要一个可靠的酶分类系统，例如药物设计、代谢网络重建和系统生物学。当上述领域的研究科学家希望明确地指代一种酶及其功能时，他们会使用国际生物化学与分子生物学联合会（IUBMB）命名委员会引入的 EC 编号。然而，这些应用中的每一个都严重依赖于基础数据的一致性和可靠性才能取得成功。我们已经开发了用于验证 EC 编号分类方案的工具。在本文中，我们提供了 3788 个酶反应的验证数据，其中包括 EC 分类系统的 229 个亚类。我们的分配与 EC 分类之间的一致性超过 80%。对于 61 个（即仅 2.5%）反应，我们发现它们的分配与命名委员会的规则不一致；它们必须转移到其他亚类。我们证明，我们的验证结果可用于启动对 EC 编号分类方案的更正和改进。
