The Protein Data Bank (PDB) recently reached a significant milestone as the 50,000th molecule structure was released into its archive, joining other structures vital to pharmacology, bioinformatics, and education.
The PDB is the single worldwide repository for the three-dimensional structures of large molecules and nucleic acids. This freely available online library allows biological researchers and students to study, store and share molecular information on a global scale. Officially founded in 1971 with seven structures at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the archive is currently managed by a consortium called the worldwide Protein Data Bank.
Today, the PDB archive receives nearly 25 new experimentally-determined structures from scientists each day. More than 5 million files are downloaded from the PDB archive every month. Users include structural biologists, computational biologists, biochemists, and molecular biologists in academia, government, and industry as well as educators and students.
The Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) PDB is based at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California at San Diego. The RCSB PDB is responsible for releasing PDB entries into the archive after they have been reviewed and annotated. In addition to a comprehensive website and database, the RCSB PDB features a Molecule of the Month series, which recently published its 100th installment.
