AFMB, Aix-Marseille University and CNRS, Marseille
We term carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) the enzymes that assemble and breakdown complex carbohydrates and carbohydrate polymers. As such, carbohydrates are crucial for most organisms as carbon sources or as signaling molecules, but also for cell wall synthesis, host pathogen interactions, energy storage etc. Unlike most other classes of enzymes which carry limited informative power, the peculiarities of carbohydrate-active enzymes and of their substrates turn these enzymes into extremely powerful probes to examine and explain the lifestyle of living organisms. Over the last few years we have explored the CAZyme content of hundreds of eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomes and we will review how evolution shapes the CAZyme profiles derived from the genomes.
