The Plant Metabolic Network (PMN) is a collaborative project among databases and biochemists with a common goal to build a broad network of plant metabolic pathway databases. A central feature of the PMN is PlantCyc, a comprehensive plant biochemical pathway database, containing curated information from the literature and computational analyses about the genes, enzymes, compounds, reactions, and pathways involved in primary and secondary metabolism.

PlantCyc can be used as a research and teaching tool, and will serve as a reference database for the generation of new "single species" pathway databases as genome sequencing efforts progress. These single species databases can be used to overlay functional genomics data such as those generated from microarray and metabolomic experiments.

PMN will release a new version of PlantCyc and the single species pathway databases biennially.

PMN is funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant #: 0640769), governed by an Editorial Board composed of internationally renowned scientists, and executed at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Plant Biology.

PlantCyc provides access to manually curated or reviewed information about shared and unique metabolic pathways present in over 250 plant species.

AraCyc provides access to manually curated or reviewed information about metabolic pathways for the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The pathways may be unique to Arabidopsis or shared with other organisms.

Data from gene expression, proteomic, and metabolomic experiments in Arabidopsis can be overlaid on a metabolic pathway map using the OMICS Viewer.

External Plant Metabolic Databases

Several additional species-specific databases, generated by PMN collaborators, are maintained and hosted at external sites. Some of the data from these databases have been incorporated into PlantCyc. Please click on the links below to access those databases directly, and read our Release Notes to learn about the content from external databases included in PlantCyc.

• CapCyc (Pepper) (Capsicum anuum)
• CoffeaCyc (Coffee) (Coffea canephora)
• LycoCyc (Tomato) (Solanum lycopersicum)
• MedicCyc (Medicago) (Medicago truncatula)
• NicotianaCyc (Tobacco) (Nicotiana tabacum)
• PetuniaCyc (Petunia) (Petunia hybrida)
• PotatoCyc (Potato) (Solanum tuberosum)
• RiceCyc (Rice) (Oryza sativa japonica Nipponbare)
• SolaCyc (Eggplant) (Solanum melongena)
• SorghumCyc (Sorghum) (Sorghum bicolor BTx623)

Have you ever wondered what information PlantCyc has about apples, bluebells, or carrots?

Please come visit the newly created PlantCyc species page found on the "Databases" submenu.

• Quickly link to all of the pathways with curated information for your favorite species


• Browse through the list of over 250 species, from Abies grandis to Zingiber officinale


• Help the PMN expand its species coverage by contributing pathway, reaction, or enzyme information for even more plants

PMN representatives visited several conferences in North America and Asia this summer and had a great time meeting members of the metabolic research community.

• The presentations from the conferences are now available on the Presentations page.


• Stay tuned for more opportunities to hear about the PMN . . .

• Come see new links to metabolite identification resources and data analysis tools from PRIMe on our Metabolomics Resources page.


• While you're there, explore the array of helpful websites you can access through these pages.