PDB hits 30,000!
William Knight
entries. This is a milestone in biomolecular structural data. Link:
http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/holdings.html
For those of you who may not familiar with the PDB, it is the public
global repository of structural molecular models, as determined by the
experimental techniques of x-ray crystallography, NMR and cryo-electron
microscopy. The database includes quite a few atomic resolution models
of the ribosomal subunits, as well as related components of the
translational machinery.
PDB structural files can be downloaded and viewed with molecular viewer
software programs such as RasMol, PyMOL or Ribosome Builder, available
at http://rbuilder.sourceforge.net (disclaimer: this is my program).
The ribosomal subunit models are especially large and interesting. You
can view screenshots of the models on some of the PDB detail pages such
the link below, which is a ribbon representation of the first atomic
resolution model of the 50S subunit (PDB model code 1ffk). Note: you
may need to scroll to the bottom of the page to see the image.