Message from the RCSB PDB

The PDB archive reached a significant milestone in its 37-year history this past spring. The 50,000th molecule structure was released into the archive on April 8, 2008, joining other structures vital to biology, medicine, and education. The worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) has seen the archive double in size since 2004, and estimates that the size of the PDB archive will triple to 150,000 structures by the year 2014.

The archive was founded in 1971 with seven structures at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Today, the wwPDB receives approximately 25 new experimentally-determined structures from scientists each day. These data are checked and processed by annotators located around the world.

wwPDB members provide a variety of ways to explore PDB data by developing online databases that promote searching, reporting, and visualizing structures.

The wwPDB will exhibit at the XXI Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography (August 21-31; Osaka, Japan). Please stop by booth #14 to learn about the latest developments.