8. PDB database

Numerous databases on the crystallography of biological macromolecules are available online, and the data to be made available is highly heterogeneous (data on sample production, crystallization, experimental data, structural and functional analyses, sequence-structure-function-evolution relationships, structures for the development of pharmacologically active compounds). Storage of increasingly massive quantities of data, maintenance, manual or automatic annotation and dynamic interconnection between these databases are major challenges if we are to transform this heterogeneous information into advances in knowledge and understanding of biological mechanisms. PDB and its associated databases aim to meet these challenges for structural biology.

The three-dimensional structures of biological macromolecules are deposited in the specialized PDB (Protein Data Bank)...