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Meet the RCSB PDB at ISMB

07/05

From July 6-10, RCSB PDB will be at the 26th Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) in Chicago, IL.

Of special interest will be a Special Session organized by Stephen Burley and Jose Duarte on Sunday July 8 on Single-particle Cryo-electron Microscopy, Cryo-electron Tomography, and Integrative/Hybrid Methods Studies of Macromolecular Machines: Opportunities and Challenges for the Bioinformatics Community.

Among the most exciting of these newly deposited PDB structures are those coming from single particle cryo-electron microscopy (EM) and cryo-electron tomography (ET). Recent technical advances in sample preparation, electron optics, direct electron detection, and data processing software have created a perfect storm for the PDB. With these new methods cryo-EM and -ET are producing atomic level structures of macromolecular machines, such as multi-subunit RNA and DNA polymerases, ribosomes, and nuclear pore complexes. The next wave of exciting new structures will come from so-called integrative/hybrid methods, which typically combine cryo-EM or -ET data with data from chemical cross-linking, fluorescence resonance energy transfer, and homology models to produce multi-scale structures of even larger biomolecular machines.

The Special Session will highlight examples of the exciting work going in these two frontier areas of structural biology with reference to the manifold challenges and opportunities for the bioinformatics community. Presenters will include Yuan He (Northwestern University), Wei Dai (Rutgers), Barak Raveh (UCSF), and Alexander Rose (UCSD).

On Tuesday July 10, Stephen Burley will present Worldwide Protein Data Bank: Shared management of a global biological data resource for the public good as part of the ELIXIR Special Presentations session.

Posters will be presented during the 3DSig:

  • B-510: RCSB PDB: Sustaining a living digital data resource that enables breakthroughs in scientific research and biomedical education
  • B-528: Symmetry and biological assemblies in the Protein Data Bank
  • B-657: Mol*: Creating a common library for web molecular graphics and analysis tools

The RCSB PDB Poster Prize will also be awarded to recognize a student poster presentation involving macromolecular crystallography.

RCSB PDB is looking for Scientific Software Developers and Postdoctoral Fellows in computational chemistry and molecular visualization to join the RCSB PDB team at UC San Diego. Please come talk to us for more information.

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