About the PDB Archive and the RCSB PDB

The Protein Data Bank (PDB) archive is the single worldwide repository of information about the 3D structures of large biological molecules, including proteins and nucleic acids. These are the molecules of life that are found in all organisms including bacteria, yeast, plants, flies, other animals, and humans. Understanding the shape of a molecule helps to understand how it works. This knowledge can be used to help deduce a structure's role in human health and disease, and in drug development. The structures in the archive range from tiny proteins and bits of DNA to complex molecular machines like the ribosome.

The PDB archive is available at no cost to users. The PDB archive is updated each week at the target time of Wednesday 00:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). The most recent release is timestamped and linked on every page in the top right header.

The PDB was established in 1971 at Brookhaven National Laboratory and originally contained 7 structures. In 1998, the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) became responsible for the management of the PDB. In 2003, the wwPDB was formed to maintain a single PDB archive of macromolecular structural data that is freely and publicly available to the global community. It consists of organizations that act as deposition, data processing and distribution centers for PDB data.

In addition, the RCSB PDB supports a website where visitors can perform simple and complex queries on the data, analyze, and visualize the results. Details about the history, function, progress, and future goals of the RCSB PDB can be found in our Annual Reports and Newsletters.

The PDB Advisory Notice defines the conditions for using data from the PDB archive. Our Policies & References page describes copyright restrictions on RCSB PDB materials, our privacy policy, and citation information. Data deposition and release policies are available from deposit.pdb.org.

RCSB PDB staff are located at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and the University of California, San Diego. Watch this RU-tv video for a tour of the Rutgers site. Job listings for open positions are also available.

RCSB PDB Users

The RCSB PDB has an international community of users, including biologists (in fields such as structural biology, biochemistry, genetics, pharmacology); other scientists (in fields such as bioinformatics, software developers for data analysis and visualization); students and educators (all levels); media writers, illustrators, textbook authors; and the general public.

The RCSB PDB website at www.pdb.org is accessed by about 140,000 unique visitors per month from nearly 140 different countries. Around 500 GigaBytes of data are transferred each month. Data are accessed via the website, ftp server (supporting ftp and rsync access), Web Services and RSS feeds.

RCSB PDB Advisory Committee

The RCSB PDB Advisory Committee is made up of an international team of experts in X-ray crystallography, cryoEM, NMR, bioinformatics and education. RCSB PDB appreciates the valuable feedback they provide on an ongoing basis.

Worldwide PDB - wwPDB

The RCSB PDB is a member of the wwPDB, a collaborative effort with PDBe (UK), PDBj (Japan), and BMRB (USA) to ensure the PDB archive is global and uniform.

As the wwPDB archive keeper, the RCSB PDB updates the PDB archive at ftp://ftp.wwpdb.org weekly. The structures included in each release are highlighted on the RCSB PDB home page and clearly defined on the FTP site. These sites are maintained 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A failover system automatically redirects internet traffic to a mirror site, if needed.