BridgIT introduces for the first time information about the enzyme binding pocket into reaction similarity comparisons and it assesses the similarity of two reactions, one orphan and one non-orphan, using the reactive sites of their substrates and their surrounding structures. Along with the structures of the generated products, it then suggests the amino acid sequences of the most similar non-orphan reaction as candidate sequences for catalyzing the orphan reaction.
The candidate enzymes proposed by BridgIT are either capable of catalyzing these reactions, or they can serve as good initial sequences for enzyme engineering.
The BridgIT online tool is freely available upon registration.