Outreach and Education

PDB-101 is RCSB PDB’s online portal for teachers, students, and the general public that promotes exploration in the world of proteins and nucleic acids. Learning about the diverse shapes and functions of these biological macromolecules helps to understand all aspects of biomedicine and agriculture, from protein synthesis to health and disease to biological energy.

This website ("101", as in an entry level course) presents introductory materials that introduce beginners to the structures of proteins and nucleic acids contained in the PDB archive. Resources for extended learning are also provided.

PDB-101 offers curricular materials, templates to create 3D paper models, Molecule of the Month articles, and other materials developed by RCSB PDB.

Users can search the website for related materials using molecule name or keyword. The Browse option can be used to explore available PDB-101 resources organized by topics such as the immune system and renewable energy.

PDB101.rcsb.org is updated with news and features regularly.

August's feature on quasisymmetry marked the 200th installment of Molecule of the Month.

Since January 2000, this series has explored the structure and function of biomacromolecules from AAA+ Proteases to Zika Virus. Each installment includes an introduction to the structure and function of the molecule, a discussion of the relevance of the molecule to human health and welfare, and an interactive 3D view.

New features are published each month at RCSB PDB and PDB-101, with an archive of articles translated into Japanese available at PDBj. The full archive of articles provides a powerful tool for exploring biology.

Written and illustrated by David S. Goodsell, the Molecule of the Month has provided an easy introduction to the RCSB PDB for teachers and students around the world. Materials from the series have been used by many textbooks, magazine and journal articles, and other publications. His image of Ebola Virus Proteins was selected as the overall winner of the 2016

Several resources have been published at PDB-101 to help celebrate this milestone:

• Use the accompanying Quasisymmetry in Icosahedral Viruses activity page to build 3D paper models of several viruses to explore how quasisymmetry builds capsids with different sizes.
• In the poster 200 Icosahedral Viruses from the PDB , 200 icosahedral virus structures from the PDB are arranged and colored by the number of protein chains in each capsid.
• The Coloring Molecular Machinery Coloring Book highlights a subset of the many diverse structures featured by Molecule of the Month articles over the years. Download the full book or individual pages to start to color.

Read the MotM 200 Article: Quasisymmetry in Icosahedral Viruses	Quasisymmetry in Icosahedral Viruses activity page	200 Icosahedral Viruses from the PDB (PDF)	Coloring Molecular Machinery: A Tour of the Protein Data Bank

The RCSB PDB Poster Prize is awarded for the best student poster presentations at selected meetings. Recipients receive an educational book.

• At the American Crystallographic Association’s Annual Meeting (July 22-26, Denver, CO), the award went to Miguel Torres for Crystallographic Structures of Pavine N-methyltrasferase Complexes Reveal New Insights into Substrate Recognition and Catalytic Mechanism (Miguel Torres, Elesha Hoffarth, Luiz Eugenio, Juila Savtchouk, Xue Chen, Jeremy Morris, Peter Facchini, Kenneth Ng, University of Calgary).

Many thanks to the Poster Chair Illa Guzei (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and judges Marie Fraser (University of Calgary), Alexander Kintzer (University of California San Francisco) Janet Newman (CSIRO), and Jessica Vey (California State University Northridge).

• At the 2016 Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) Conference in Orlando, Florida (July 8-12), the RCSB PDB Poster Prize went to Fan Zheng for Tertiary Structural Propensities Reveal Basic Sequence-Structure Relationships in Proteins (Fan Zheng, Jian Zhang, Gevorg Grigoryan, Dartmouth College).

Many thanks to Co-Chairs Iddo Friedberg (Iowa State University) and Casey Greene (University of Pennsylvania), the entire Posters Committee, and Steven Leard (ISMB).

• At the 30th Meeting of the European Crystallographic Association (August 28-September 1, Basel Switzerland), the RCSB PDB Poster Prize was awarded to Angus Cowan for Structural and Functional Characterisation of Bok, a Pro-apoptotic Bcl-2 Effector Protein (Angus D. Cowan, Peter M. Colman, Peter E. Czabotar, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and Department of Medical Biology, University of Melbourne, Australia).

Many thanks to the Poster Chair Bernhard Spingler (University of Zurich) and judges Eleanor Dodson (University of York) and Gerlind Sulzenbacher (AFMB/CNRS and Aiz Marseille University).