25 years of the Protein Data Bank

The Protein Data Bank (PDB) has just celebrated its 25th year of service to the structural biology community. From its inception in 1973, it took until 1992 before 1,000 depositions were made. There are now over 6,000 entries. The current rate of submission is about 30/week, compared with 3/week in the early 1990s. The PDB has been making changes to improve its services, such as developing tools to visualize, query and understand the entries in the bank. It has become a database and not merely a data bank. Important operational steps in the last few years include: Release of AutoDep, a new web-based deposition system, Establishment of seven PDB Mirror sites to relieve network congestion, Release of a new browser which includes automatic links to external data, Design and release of a standard Structure Factors file format based on mmCIF, Establishment of a new Internet bulletin board for the PDB, Design and prototype of a new relational database - 3DB. More information is at www.pdb.bnl.gov.