Celebrating 50 Years of the Protein Data Bank Archive

In 1971, the structural biology community established the single worldwide archive for macromolecular structure data–the Protein Data Bank (PDB). From its inception, the PDB has embraced a culture of open access, leading to its widespread use by the research community. PDB data are used by hundreds of data resources and millions of users exploring fundamental biology, energy, and biomedicine.

In 2021, RCSB PDB and the wwPDB celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the PDB with symposia, materials, and more.

Meetings |Journal Collections and Articles|Historical Background |Celebration Materials

Meetings

• PDB50 Meetings and Symposia hosted by the wwPDB Foundation
• Inaugural event:A special symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Protein Data Bank (May 4-5, 2021;watch presentation videos).
• Meeting Summary by Brian Hudson and Gregg Crichlow
• Transactions Symposium 2021: Function Follows Form: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Protein Data Bank (July 30-31, 2021).
  This virtual event is part of the Annual Meeting of the American Crystallographic Association.
• Meeting summary by Gregg Crichlow, Justin Flatt, Brian Hudson, and Yuhe Liang
• Understanding Enzyme Function in 3D: Celebrating 50 Years of the Protein Data Bank (Aug 25, 2021); part of theFall ACS Meeting.
• Biophysical Society Celebrates 50 Years of the PDB (October 6, 2021;watch presentation videos)
• Bringing Molecular Structure to Life: 50 Years of the PDB (October 20-22, 2021) EMBL Conference.
• Celebrating PDB Contributions from Rutgers University Structural Biologists (November 2, virtual)
• Truth Sometimes Triumphs: A History of Structural Enzymology Rutgers Institute of Quantitative Biomedicine PDB50 Lecture by Greg Petsco (Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital) hosted on November 4, 2021.
• Protein Data Bank at 50: Accessing, Understanding, and Assessing PDB Datahosted by the Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group (November 16 and November 18; watch presentation videos ofday 1 andday 2 )
• 50 Years of the PDB and the Frontier of Structural Biology in Asia: A satellite symposium (Nov 24) of theBiophysical Society of Japan (Nov 25-27, 2021;poster prizes awarded)
• 2021 PDB50 Calendar and Virtual Meeting Backgrounds
• PDB50 virtual meeting background
• Additional virtual meeting backgrounds

How the PDB changed biology

Issue contains reviews that celebrates scientific areas profoundly touched by the creation of the PDB

The PDB in JBC

Collection of Journal of Biological Chemistry publications that highlights some seminal PDB structures
Access the PDB structures included in this collection

Nature Methods
Vol 18, Issue 5, May 2021

Collection: PDB 50th Anniversary:celebrating the future of structural biology

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
Vol 28, Issue 5, May 2021

Collection: PDB 50th Anniversary:celebrating the future of structural biology

ASBMB Today
Vol 20, Issue 3, March 2021

Rutgers Today
October 19, 2021

SDSC
November 1, 2021

NIGMS Biomedical Beat Blog
November 10, 2021

PDB50 Game: This gives players the opportunity to explore the process of structure discovery.

Structural Biology Playing Cards

Molecule of the Month: Fifty Years of Open Access to PDB Structures

PDB Citation MeSH Network Explorer

Video: Celebrating in Virtual Reality
Exploration of groundbreaking PDB structures for structure-based drug design.

Education Corner: Inktober SciArt Celebrating PDB50

PDB50 Recognized in the Congressional Record (HTML |PDF)

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.