Protein Data Bank: 100,000 structures

Spanning the globe from the US, UK, and Japan, the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) organization announces that the Protein Data Bank archive now contains more than 100,000 entries.

Established in 1971, this central, public archive of experimentally-determined protein and nucleic acid structures has reached a critical milestone thanks to the efforts of structural biologists throughout the world.

Four wwPDB data centers support online access to three-dimensional structures of biological macromolecules that help researchers understand many facets of biomedicine, agriculture, and ecology, from protein synthesis to health and disease to biological energy.

Among the first structures deposited in the PDB were those of myoglobin and hemoglobin, two oxygen-binding molecules whose structures were elucidated by Chemistry Nobel Laureates John Kendrew and Max Perutz. With this week's regular update, the PDB welcomes 219 new structures into the archive. These structures join others vital to drug discovery, bioinformatics, and education, for a total of 100,147 entries.

The PDB is growing rapidly, doubling in size since 2008, and releasing around 200 new structures to the scientific community every week. The resource is accessed hundreds of millions of times annually by researchers, students, and educators intent on exploring how different proteins are related to one another, to clarify fundamental biological mechanisms and discover new medicines.