What's New at the PDB

PDB has implemented an Electronic Deposition Form, the addition of multicolor images of structures on the PDB Gopher and World Wide Web (WWW) servers, and the introduction of an entry tracking system. The new Electronic Deposition Form is available from FTP. All depositors are encouraged to use it. A series of 474 multicolor images of PDB structures has been added to the PDB Gopher and WWW servers. Users may access these images from the FTP (also Gopher or WWW via "The PDB's AnonymousFTP") directory/images. A tracking number uniquely defining each submission issued at the time of initial deposit enables users, journals, and the PDB to follow the progress of every entry through the entire screening process via our Gopher system. PDB is contemplating discontinuation of tape distribution.

CIF and the PDB

CIF is a direct descendant of the STAR (Self-defining Text Archive and Retrieval) file created by S. Hall. The stated goals of STAR (and CIF) were to have a format that would be able to store all kinds of data, be machine independent, simple to read and access, and flexible to future change. Most people agree that CIF is capable of storing a wide range of ASCII data, is mostly machine independent, is easily machine readable, and, perhaps most importantly, is flexible.

Two dictionaries of greatest concern to macromolecular crystallographers, the Core Dictionary and the mmCIF Dictionary, are available on the PDB file server in the directory /pub/CIF.

Descriptions of Sequence Information

PDB plans to include new record types to improve descriptions of sequence information now given in the SEQRES records. The new records will provide annotation mechanisms to correlate information stored in PDB entries with that found in the sequence databases.

Access by FTP

PDB has an anonymous FTP account on the computer system ftp.pdb.bnl.gov (Internet address 130.199.144.1). Files may be transferred to and from this system using anonymous as the FTP user name and your email address as the password.

Gopher

PDB has a Gopher server on the system gopher.pdb.bnl.gov (130.199.144.1). This server is accessible using a Gopher client connecting to the following link:
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Access by www

PDB has a WWW server on the computer system www.pdb.bnl.gov(130.199.144.1). This server is accessible using the Document URL http://www.pdb.bnl.gov/.