The BioCyc collection of Pathway/Genome Databases (PGDBs) provides a reference on the genomes and metabolic pathways of thousands of sequenced organisms. The PGDBs are generated by software that predicts metabolic pathways and also predicts which genes code for missing enzymes in metabolic routing. BioCyc integrates information from other bioinformatics databases. The BioCyc website offers a range of software tools for searching and visualizing databases, for data analysis and for comparative genomics.

BioCyc databases (DBs) are organized into tiers according to the amount of manual updating they have received.

• Tier 1: PGDBs that receive intensive manual curation and are regularly updated on the basis of literature. These are the most accurate. Currently there are seven databases at tier 1.
• Tier2: PGDBs were generated computationally by the PathoLogic program but received a modest manual curation. For 43 different organisms there are currently databases at tier 2.
• Tier 3: PGDBs were generated computationally by PathoLogic and received no manual curation.

Funding sources:
The development of BioCyc is funded by NIH subsidy GM080746 from the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

For more information and feedback, please mail to: gmeerburg@uva.nl.