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Data to knowledge: how to get meaning from your result

[visualisation of external restraints during refinement]Like many modern areas of science, structural biology faces enormous challenges created by the vast amount of data generated every day by research groups. As such structural and functional studies require the development of sophisticated "Big Data" technologies and software to increase the knowledge derived and ensure reproducibility of the data. A group of scientists [Berman et al. (2015). IUCrJ. 2, 45-58; doi:10.1107/S2052252514023306] present summaries of the Structural Biology Knowledge Base, the VIPERdb Virus Structure Database, evaluation of homology modelling by the Protein Model Portal, the ProSMART tool for conformation-independent structure comparison, the LabDB "super" laboratory information management system and the Cambridge Structural Database. These techniques and technologies represent important tools for the transformation of crystallographic data into knowledge and information, in an effort to address the problem of non-reproducibility of experimental results.