The objective of the Springer Handbook of Enzymes is to provide in concise form data on enzymes sufficiently well characterized. Data sheets are arranged in their EC number sequence. There exist about 25,000 synonyms for the 3,700 classified enzymes. This Synonym Index helps in finding the recommended name for a given enzyme. It is also correlated with the EC number and the volume and page number of the corresponding place in the Springer Handbook of Enzymes.

The Springer Handbook of Enzymes is a concise and complete description of more than 3,700 enzymes sufficiently well characterized for application in analytical, synthetic and biotechnology processes, as well as in food industry. Each volume comprises one enzyme class, sometimes the enzyme classes have to be divided into several volumes.

Considerable progress has been made in enzymology since the publication of the first edition (published as "Enzyme Handbook"): many enzymes are newly classified or reclassified. In the 2nd edition each entry is correlated with references and one or more source organisms. New datafields are created: "application" and "engineering" (for the properties of enzymes where the sequence has been changed). Alltogether the amount of data has doubled so that the 2nd edition will consist of approx. 25 volumes, which will be published within 5-6 years.

Each year a supplement will be published according to the newly classified enzymes by the Enzyme Commission.

The Springer Handbook of Enzymes provides: relevant data and crossreferences for all well characterized enzymes reported in the literature.

Enzymes are applied in organic synthesis and in analytical chemistry, in industrial production processes of pharmaceuticals and in food processing. Finding a suitable enzyme for a desired transformation or with a defined specificity is not always an easy task. More than 3,700 enzymes are well described to date. The Springer Handbook of Enzymes provides all the information for selecting the proper enzyme to perform defined transformations in a given environment. The Springer Handbook of Enzymes devotes a variable number of pages for each enzyme, depending on the amount of information available with the EC number as ordering criterion within a volume.

The objective of the Springer Handbook of Enzymes is to provide in concise form data on enzymes sufficiently well characterized. Data sheets are arranged in their EC number sequence. There exist about 25,000 synonyms for the 3,700 classified enzymes. This Synonym Index helps in finding the recommended name for a given enzyme. It is also correlated with the EC number and the volume and page number of the corresponding place in the Springer Handbook of Enzymes.