Outreach and Education

A new calendar highlighting protein-drug complexes in the PDB archive is available for download in PDF (4 MB) and PowerPoint (20 MB) formats. A few printed copies are available; please email info@rcsb.org to request a copy.

At the 13^th Conference of the Asian Crystallographic Association (December 5-8, Science City, Kolkata, India), the RCSB PDB Poster Prize was awarded to Vitul Jain for Structure of prolyl-tRNA synthetase-halofuginone complex provides basis for development of novel drugs against malaria and toxoplasmosis (Vitul Jain,¹ Manickam Yogavel,¹ Yoshiteru Oshima,² Haruhisa Kikuchi,² Bastien Touquet,³ Mohamed-Ali Hakimi,³ and Amit Sharma (¹International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India; ²Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan; ³Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CRNS) and Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France).

Many thanks to the judges: Ruchi Anand (Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India), Rajesh Ghai (University of New South Wales, Australia), Christopher Squire (University of Auckland, New Zealand), and Michi Suga (Okayama University, Japan); and to Alice Vrielink (University of Western Australia), Chair of the International Program Committee, and Pinak Chakrabarti (Bose Institute), President, AsCA, and Chair Local Organizing Committee.

All 2015 awardees are listed on the RCSB PDB website.

At the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (November 9-12, Seattle, WA), RCSB PDB participated in the exhibit hall with Rutgers University to talk to researchers and students about our resources and summer intern program.

• American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting (October 6-10, Baltimore, MD). Andreas Prlić and Roshni Bhattacharya presented posters demonstrating the mapping of the human genome to protein sequence and 3D structure at rcsb.org and analyzing PDB structures containing genetic variation data.
• California Big Data to Knowledge Network Meeting (October 9-10, Palm Desert, CA). Peter Rose attended this inaugural meeting that brought together researchers from the six BD2K California projects. Participants presented overviews of their plans on the use of big data in biomedicine.
• New Jersey Science Convention (October 13-14, Princeton, NJ). Area high school science teachers learned about resources for exploring biology and medicine at the molecular level at the RCSB PDB exhibit booth and at a presentation on Insulin: The First Biotechnology Drug by Shuchismita Dutta and Maria Voigt.
• National Conference of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (October 29-31, Washington, DC).  A scientific session on Designer Proteins for Treating Diabetes Mellitus Explained in 3-Dimensions included presentations by Helen Berman, Shuchismita Dutta, Nancy Hernandez, and Stephen K. Burley.  RCSB PDB also participated in the exhibit hall with Rutgers University.  Summer intern Alex Alvarado (University of Southern California) presented a poster on his recent RCSB PDB project on Exploring Irving Geis' Legacy.
• X-ray Methods in Structural Biology (October 12-27, Cold Spring Harbor, NY). John Westbrook participated in this annual instructional course with a discussion on Automating PDB Deposition.
• National Science Teachers Association Philadelphia Area Conference (November 12-14). Shuchismita Dutta  co-presented with high school teachers Anne Sanelli and William Mott on  Redefining HIV/AIDS Education Using Molecular Science-based Curricula.

Build a 3D paper model of insulin with this new PDB-101 activity. An accompanying video demonstrates how to create the model and highlights key structural features of the molecule. A series of interactive views of insulin illustrate how insulin's conformation changes as it transitions from a storage to functionally active form.

Citing a Data Repository: A Case Study of the Protein Data Bank Yi-Hung Huang, Peter W. Rose, Chun-Nan Hsu (2015) PLoS ONE 10: e0136631 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0136631