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Announcing the worldwide Protein Data Bank

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 10, page 980 (2003)Cite this article

In recognition of the growing international and interdisciplinary nature of structural biology, three organizations have formed a collaboration to oversee the newly formed worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB; http://www.wwpdb.org/). The Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB), the Macromolecular Structure Database (MSD) at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and the Protein Data Bank Japan (PDBj) at the Institute for Protein Research in Osaka University will serve as custodians of the wwPDB, with the goal of maintaining a single archive of macromolecular structural data that is freely and publicly available to the global community.

The wwPDB represents a milestone in the evolution of the Protein Data Bank (PDB; http://www.pdb.org/)1,2, which was established in 1971 at Brookhaven National Laboratory as the sole international repository for three-dimensional structure data of biological macromolecules. Since July 1, 1999, the PDB has been managed by three member institutions of the RSCB: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego; and the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

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References

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  3. Callaway, J. et al. Protein Data Bank Contents Guide: Atomic coordinate entry format description. (Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1996).

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Acknowledgements

The RCSB PDB is supported by funds from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health. The MSD-EBI is supported by funds from the Wellcome Trust, the European Union (TEMBLOR, NMRQUAL, SPINE, AUTOSTRUCT, and IIMS awards), CCP4, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UK), the Medical Research Council (UK), and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. PDBj is supported by grant-in-aid from the Institute for Bioinformatics Research and Development, Japan Science and Technology Corporation (BIRD-JST), and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. RCSB, Piscataway, New Jersey; Rockville, Maryland and La Jolla, California, USA

    Helen Berman

  2. MSD-EBI, Hinxton, UK

    Kim Henrick

  3. PDBj, Institute for Protein Research, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Haruki Nakamura

Authors
  1. Helen Berman
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  2. Kim Henrick
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  3. Haruki Nakamura
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Correspondence to Helen Berman.

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Berman, H., Henrick, K. & Nakamura, H. Announcing the worldwide Protein Data Bank. Nat Struct Mol Biol 10, 980 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsb1203-980

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