β-lactamases
β-lactams are among the most important and widely used antibiotics. However, enzymatic hydrolysis by bacterial β-lactamases is increasingly compromising their efficiency. Although newer generation lactams have been developed to combat antibiotic resistance, bacterial β-lactamases have also evolved along with the new variants of the substrate. Strong selection pressure has resulted in evolution of different families within each class. To facilitate identification and characterization of different families of β-lactamases, we have introduced a novel database CBMAR, which facilitates comprehensive molecular annotation of β-lactamases and discovery of new β-lactam antibiotics. As against the limited scope of other existing databases such as Antibiotic Resistance Genes Database (ARDB), The Lactamase Engineering Database (LacED), Lahey Clinic TEM, SHV, OXA Extended-Spectrum and Inhibitor Resistant Enzymes listing, CBMAR provides information useful for molecular and biochemical characterization of each family of β-lactamases.
The basic architecture of CBMAR is based on Ambler classification. Each class is then divided into several families on the basis of their hydrolyzing characteristics. In CBMAR each family is annotated with (i) detail of its origin, (ii) antibiotic resistance profile, (iii) inhibitor susceptibility, (iv)active site, (v) family fingerprints etc. Each family has external links to the sequences and protein databases. The database also supports sequence similarity search using BLAST. As of the date, CBMAR contains information for One Hundred Sixteen (116) distinct families and comprises a total of 2390 protein sequences.
Please cite following Database if you are using it in your work:
Srivastava, A., Singhal, N., Goel, M., Virdi, J. S., & Kumar, M. (2014). CBMAR: a comprehensive β-lactamase molecular annotation resource. Database, 2014, bau111 Doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/database/bau111.