PDB and Rasmol

Today class, 28th Oct 2009, we learned about Protein Data Bank (PDB).

The PDB archive contains information about experimentally-determined structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies. As a member of the wwPDB, the RCSB PDB curates and annotates PDB data according to agreed upon standards.

The RCSB PDB also provides a variety of tools and resources. Users can perform simple and advanced searches based on annotations relating to sequence, structure and function. These molecules are visualized, downloaded, and analyzed by users who range from students to specialized scientists.

We must download molecule structure from PDB website, http://www.rcsb.org/
After download the 3-D molecule structure, we opened and viewed it in Rasmol.

Using Rasmol, we can display the selected molecule as wireframe, backbone, sticks, spacefill, ribbons, strands, cartoons, or molecular surface. We also can change the colour of the molecule to monochrome, CPK, shapely, group, temperature, structure, user, model or alt. Besides, we also can rotate the molecule to view each sides.

With PBD and Rasmol, now, we can easily get various kind of 3-D molecular structures and edit them according to our needs.

I found that it is kind of interesting to learn about PDB and used Rasmol software. Before this, i never heard of them. So, today's learning is very beneficial to me.