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Key developments related to the transition to extended PDB IDs will be posted to this list.
The Data API and Search API are the two main APIs that power RCSB.org. The Data API serves to retrieve data based on PDB ID while the Search API retrieves PDB is that match given conditions.
Detailed documentation on RCSB PDB Web Service APIs for more expert users is available, along with a general PDB-101 introduction for beginners.
Register for the January 26 Webinar on Advanced Search
The RCSB PDB Advanced Search tool allows users to build precise and complex queries. Unlike the Basic Search, which is broad and text-based, Advanced Search offers fine-grained control over which data fields to search, the type of search to perform, and how results are combined.
Join RCSB PDB's Yana Rose to learn about the redesigned features of Advanced Search.
After the webinar, users will be able to:
- Determine the best search tool or tools to identify structures of interest
- Select an attribute for searching (e.g., Organism, Experimental Method, Resolution) and add conditions to narrow results
- Find structures that contain a similar nucleotide or protein sequence
- Find structures with sequences that share small conserved regions (motifs) that have biological meaning
- Find structures that share a similar 3D shape
- Find structures that contain a similar 3D arrangement of residues with functional significance (catalytic or binding sites)
- Search and explore experimental structures, integrative structures, and Computed Structure Models (CSMs)
The webinar is intended for:
- Bioinformatics and/or structural biology researchers
- Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in biological sciences
- Anyone interested in learning more about RCSB.org
This virtual event will take place
Monday January 26, 2026
noon - 1pm Eastern | 9am - 10am Pacific.
Please register for this free event. An institutional email address for registration is preferred. You will receive confirmation and a Zoom link by email before the event.
Explore Structural Biology with CSMs
The experimental structure of chloroplast ATP synthase from spinach is shown on the left (PDB ID pdb_00006fkf). No experimental structure is currently available for the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana, but computed structure models of the individual protein subunits have been predicted using AlphaFold2, as shown on the right.
Ever since the first structures of proteins were determined, scientists have been searching for ways to predict the folding pattern of protein chains. After many years of study, several approaches have been successful. Homology modeling starts with a protein of known 3D structure and predicts the 3D structure of similar proteins based on the 1D sequence alignment. Newer methods, like AlphaFold2 and RosettaFold2, expand on this approach, using artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) to predict the structure based on a large database of known structures. Physics-based methods start from first principles and simulate the folding of proteins. Currently, homology modeling is highly effective for many well-folded proteins, AI/ML-based methods expand this to predict structures across entire proteomes, and physics-based methods are effective mostly for small proteins.
RCSB.org currently hosts a collection of more than one million computed structure models (CSMs) coming from the AlphaFold Database and the Model Archive. These data are delivered alongside more than 246,000 experimentally-determined PDB structures. Searching for both PDB structures and CSMs at RCSB.org can be turned on using the toggle located at the upper right corner of each RCSB.org web page.