Overview |Services |Funding |Users |Impact |Collaborations
RCSB PDB (RCSB.org) is the US data center for the global Protein Data Bank (PDB) archive of 3D structure data for large biological molecules (proteins, DNA, and RNA) essential for research and education in fundamental biology, health, energy, and biotechnology.
The Protein Data Bank (PDB) was established as the 1st open access digital data resource in all of biology and medicine (Historical Timeline). It is today a leading global resource for experimental data central to scientific discovery.
Through an internet information portal and downloadable data archive, PDB provides access to 3D structure data for the molecules of life, found in all organisms on the planet.
Knowing the 3D structure of a biological macromolecule is essential for understanding its role in human and animal health and disease, its function in plants and food and energy production, and its importance to other topics related to global prosperity and sustainability.
The enormous wealth of 3D structure data stored in the PDB has underpinned significant advances in our understanding of protein architecture, culminating in recent breakthroughs in protein structure prediction accelerated by artificial intelligence approaches and deep or machine learning methods.
RCSB PDB (Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics PDB) operates the US data center for the global PDB archive, and makes PDB data available at no charge to all data consumers without limitations on usage (Policies).
Recognized experts in fields, including but not limited to, structural biology, cell and molecular biology, computational biology, information technology, and educationserve as advisors to the RCSB PDB.
Researchers, scientists, educators, students, curious public, medical professionals, patients, and patient advocates
Public and Private sectors, including pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies
RCSB PDB is supported by grants from theU.S. National Science Foundation (DBI-2321666), theUS Department of Energy (DE-SC0019749), and theNational Cancer Institute,National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant R01GM157729.
In the past, RCSB PDB was also funded by the National Library of Medicine, the National Center for Research Resources, theNational Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and theNational Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Other funding awards to RCSB PDB by the NSF and to PDBe by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Research Council are jointly supporting development of a Next Generation PDB archive (DBI-2019297, PI: S.K. Burley; BB/V004247/1, PI: Sameer Velankar) and new Mol* features (DBI-2129634, PI: S.K. Burley; BB/W017970/1, PI: Sameer.
RCSB PDB supports aninternational community of users, including biologists (in fields such as structural biology, biochemistry, genetics, pharmacology); other scientists (in fields such as bioinformatics, software developers for data analysis and visualization); students and educators (all levels); media writers, illustrators, textbook authors; and the general public.
RCSB PDB services have broad impact across research and education. The inaugural RCSB PDB citation (Bermanet al.,Nucleic Acids Research 2000) is one of the top-cited scientific publications of all time. A2017 bibliometric analysisperformed by Clarivate Analytics shows PDB motivated high-quality research throughout the world. Papers citing had a citation-based impact exceeding the world-average in 16 scientific fields including Biology & Biochemistry, Computer Science, Plant & Animal Sciences, Physics, Environment/Ecology, Mathematics and Geosciences.
A 2017economic analysisperformed by the Rutgers Office of Research Analytics noted that a reasonable estimate to replicate the PDB data archive at the time was $12 billion.
The Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) was formed to maintain a single PDB archive of macromolecular structural data that is freely and publicly available to the global community. It consists of organizations that act as deposition, data processing and distribution centers for PDB data. As the US Data Center, RCSB PDB biocurates structures submitted from the Americas and Oceania.
PDB-IHM is a system for archiving structural models obtained using integrative or hybrid modeling, managed by the wwPDB and funded by the NSF, DOE, and NIH.
EMDataResource provides access to 3DEM density maps and metadata, news, events, software tools, data standards, and validation methods.
KBase enables users to analyze, share, and collaborate using data and tools designed to help build increasingly realistic models for biological function. KBase utilizes RCSB PDB APIs to provide users with access to PDB data.
RCSB PDB Core Operations are funded by theU.S. National Science Foundation (DBI-2321666), theUS Department of Energy (DE-SC0019749), and theNational Cancer Institute,National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, andNational Institute of General Medical Sciences of theNational Institutes of Health under grant R01GM157729.