This resource is powered by the Protein Data Bank archive-information about the 3D shapes of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies that helps students and researchers understand all aspects of biomedicine and agriculture, from protein synthesis to health and disease.
As a member of the wwPDB, the RCSB PDB curates and annotates PDB data.
The RCSB PDB builds upon the data by creating tools and resources for research and education in molecular biology, structural biology, computational biology, and beyond.
New Video: What is a Protein?
January Molecule of the Month
Opioid Receptors
Deposition Preparation Tools
Data Extraction
pdb_extract: Extract and harvest data in PDBx/mmCIF format from structure determination programs
SF-Tool: Convert structure factor files among various formats
Small Molecules
Ligand Expo: Search the Chemical Component Dictionary for the IDs of released ligands
Data Format Conversion
PDBML2CIF: Convert PDBML-format data into PDBx/mmCIF-format
PointSuite: Generate symmetry records for macromolecular assemblies with point and helical symmetries
MAXIT: Translate data between file formats and more
Validation Services
Validation reports contain an assessment of the quality of a structure and highlight specific concerns by considering the coordinates of the model, the experimental data and the fit between the two. Easily interpretable summary information that compares the quality of a model with that of other models in the archive will help users of PDB data to critically assess archived entries and to select the most appropriate structural models for their needs. These reports are developed using the recommendations of thewwPDB Validation Task Forces.
Reports for released entries are available from Structure Summary pages.
Validation reports for manuscript reviewers are created during annotation of deposited structures.
Phase I: Every Saturday by 3:00 UTC, for every new entry, wwPDB website provides sequence(s) (amino acid or nucleotide) for each distinct polymer and, where appropriate, the InChI string(s) for each distinct ligand and the crystallization pH value(s).
Phase II: Every Wednesday by 00:00 UTC, all new and modified data entries will be updated at each of the wwPDB FTP sites.
PoseView images are 2D diagrams that show a ligand and interacting residues.
Black dashed lines indicate hydrogen bonds, salt bridges, and metal interactions. Green solid line show hydrophobic interactions and green dashed lines show π-π and π-cation interactions.
Access PoseView images in the Ligand Chemical Component section on an entry's Structure Summary.
Provides a graphical summary of a full-length protein sequence from UniProt and how it corresponds to PDB entries. It also loads annotations from external databases (such as Pfam) and homology models information from the Protein Model Portal. Annotations visualizing predicted regions of protein disorder and hydrophobic regions are displayed.
This feature is available from the Molecular Description widget on Structure Summary pages and by entering a UniProt ID below.
Human Gene View
Illustrates the correspondences between the human genome and 3D structure. All human genes have been mapped to representative PDB structure protein chains (selected from sequence clusters at 40% sequence identity) to show which regions of a gene are available in PDB coordinates.
This feature is available from the Molecular Description widget on Structure Summary pages and by entering an HGNC Human Gene Symbol below (examples).
Sequence & Structure Alignment
RCSB PDB's Comparison Tool calculates pairwise sequence (blast2seq, Needleman-Wunsch, and Smith-Waterman) and structure alignments (FATCAT, CE, Mammoth, TM-Align, TopMatch).
Comparisons can be made for any protein in the PDB archive and for customized or local files not in the PDB. Special features include support for both rigid-body and flexible alignments and detection of circular permutations.
Protein Symmetry
The NGL symmetry view highlights global, local, and helical symmetry among subunits. The view displays the symmetry axes, a polyhedron that reflects the symmetry, and a color scheme that emphasizes the symmetry.
Structure Summary pages provide access to information about structure quality.
The slider graphic compares important global quality indicators for a given structure with the PDB archive. Global percentile ranks (black vertical boxes) are calculated with respect to all X-ray structures available prior to 2011. Resolution-specific percentile ranks (white vertical boxes) are calculated considering entries with similar resolution.
This graphic is from the wwPDBValidation Report , which provides a more detailed assessment of the quality of a structure and highlights specific concerns. These reports were created using the recommendations of wwPDB Validation Task Forces.The full wwPDB Validation Report PDF is available for download. PDFs of Ramachandran plots (created by MolProbity) are provided to offer an independent method to evaluate the conformational quality of protein structures.
For examples, view the Structure Summary pages for 1CBS (1.8Å structure of a small protein and a ligand , an entry with better overall quality relative to all X-ray structures) and 1FCC (a 3.2Å structure with worse overall quality relative to all X-ray structures).
Map Genomic Position to Protein
Mutations in a gene can have profound effects on the function of a protein. This analysis tool highlights the location of a gene location (i.e., the site of a SNP).
Example of SNP in Breast Cancer 1 Gene
A TGT-to-GGT transversion in codon 64 of the BRCA1 gene leads to substitution of glycine for cysteine. This SNP is located on chromosome 17 at genomic coordinate: 43,106,478. The new mapping tool can be used to locate this position on the UniProt sequence and 3D structure.
Enter PDB IDs separated by comma or white space. Note: The Download Tool is launched as a stand-alone application using the Java Web Start protocol. More Download Help
Download: Sequences
Enter PDB IDs separated by comma or white space. Download Help
Enter ligand IDs separated by comma or white space. Download Help
FTP Services
Searches and reports performed on this RCSB PDB website utilize data from the PDB archive. The PDB archive is maintained by the wwPDB at ftp.wwpdb.org (data download details).
Major Directories
The directory pub/pdb is the entry directory for the ftp site.
The directory pub/pdb/data/structures/divided contains the current PDB contents including PDB, mmCIF, and PDBML/XML formatted coordinate files, structure factors and NMR restraints
PDB structure files, chemical component files, and several other files are available for download via http/https. These URLs are useful in scripted downloads using utilities such as wget.
Simple text searches at rcsb.org are now easier and more accurate. Text searching from the top query bar has been redesigned and is now powered by the open source Apache Solr platform. Results are based on an indexing of PDBx/mmCIF data.
This issue introduces the reviews 2017 milestones and publications, improved text searching, and implementation of versioning for PDB data files. Winter 2018 Newsletter
