THE BROOKHAVEN PROTEIN DATA BANK

Otto Ritter1,2, Enrique Abola1, Jaime Prilusky1,3 & Joel L. Sussman1,4

1Protein Data Bank Biology Department Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973
2Department of Molecular Biophysics German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany
3Bioinformatics Unit Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot 76100, Israel
4Department of Structural Biology Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot 76100, Israel

The Protein Data Bank (PDB) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is an archive of experimentally determined three dimensional structures of biological macromolecules, serving a global community of researchers, educators, and students. The challenges presented by the enormous growth in data over the past several years have been met by the PDB staff and management, which now provides an up-to-date archive, while simultaneously expanding network access (Stampf et al., 1995) and building strong world-wide collaborations (Peitsch et al., 1995). Even larger challenges are at hand, as the deposition rate continues to rise along with the expectations of the consumers of these data. We are enhancing the capabilities of the PDB and transforming it into a new biological Three-Dimensional Macromolecular Structure Database, while retaining many of the features of the PDB, for compatibility (Abola et. al., 1997; Sussman, 1997). Over the course of the next few years, we will continue to:

  1. Abola, E. E., Sussman, J. L., Prilusky, J. & Manning, N. O. (1997). Protein Data Bank Archives of Three-Dimensional Macromolecular Structures. Methods in Enzym. 277, 556-571.
  2. Peitsch, M. C., Stampf, D. R., Wells, T. N. C. & Sussman, J. L. (1995). The Swiss 3D-Image Collection and Brookhaven Protein Data Bank Browser on the World-Wide Web. Trends in Biochemical Sciences 20, 82-84.
  3. Stampf, D. R., Felder, C. E. & Sussman, J. L. (1995). PDBBrowse - a Graphics Interface to the Brookhaven Protein Data Bank. Nature 374, 572-574.
  4. Sussman, J. L. (1997). Bridging the Gap. Nature Struct. Biol. 4, 517.