Newsletter | Winter 2017 Number 72

2016 Milestones

On January 1, 2017, the PDB archive contained 125,463 experimentally-determined 3D structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies that help students and researchers understand all aspects of biomedicine and agriculture, from protein synthesis to health and disease. PDB data were downloaded from wwPDB FTP and websites >591 million times last year, with website resources at rcsb.org visited each month by an average of 347,436 unique visitors, with >1 million unique visitors accessing the site annually from around the world.

2016 was the year of many RCSB PDB and wwPDB milestones and events, including:

• Release of the OneDep system for the deposition, validation, and annotation of PDB data submitted from all accepted experimental methods (X-ray crystallography, NMR, 3DEM)
• Unique Sci-Art Public Symposium on Aesthetics and the Life Sciences
• The new NGL 3D viewer that quickly renders even the largest of macromolecular machines from desktops to mobile devices.  NGL is also used throughout rcsb.org to display ligand interactions, wwPDB Validation Report information and more
• In February, the PDB archive passed the billion-atom mark
• Molecule of the Month celebrated its 200th issue with special features on quasisymmetry
• For one week in October, the PDB archive contained 123,456 entries 
• The PDB released the first structure of the Zika virus, which was then followed by structures of the Zika virus with antibodies

In celebration of the new year, RCSB PDB has published a 2017 calendar highlighting the work of Irving Geis (1908-1997), a gifted artist who helped illuminate the field of structural biology with his iconic images of DNA, hemoglobin, and other important macromolecules.

Through a collaboration with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), which owns the Geis Archives, RCSB PDB has established a digital archive of Geis' molecular art. This resource displays many of Geis' illustrations in the context of the corresponding PDB structures and related molecular information. Through this archive, these images are available for download for noncommercial usage.  This calendar was created by Raheel Ahmad (Rutgers), Pamela Amechi (University of Maryland Baltimore Country), and Keyerra Daniels (Winthrop University) as part of a summer internship with RCSB PDB.

Download the calendar as a PDF or access these images and more from PDB-101's Geis Digital Archive.