The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is a database for the three-dimensional structural data of large biological molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids, which is overseen by the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB). These structural data are obtained and deposited by biologists and biochemists worldwide through the use of experimental methodologies such as X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, and, increasingly, cryo-electron microscopy. All submitted data are reviewed by expert biocurators and, once approved, are made freely available on the Internet under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. Global access to the data is provided by the websites of the wwPDB member organisations.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is part of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is approved and funded by the government of the United States. The NCBI is located in Bethesda, Maryland, and was founded in 1988 through legislation sponsored by US Congressman Claude Pepper.
GROMACS is a molecular dynamics package mainly designed for simulations of proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids. It was originally developed in the Biophysical Chemistry department of University of Groningen, and is now maintained by contributors in universities and research centers worldwide. GROMACS is one of the fastest and most popular software packages available, and can run on central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs). It is free, open-source software released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
Chemistry at Harvard Macromolecular Mechanics (CHARMM) is the name of a widely used set of force fields for molecular dynamics, and the name for the molecular dynamics simulation and analysis computer software package associated with them. The CHARMM Development Project involves a worldwide network of developers working with Martin Karplus and his group at Harvard to develop and maintain the CHARMM program. Licenses for this software are available, for a fee, to people and groups working in academia.
Structural bioinformatics is the branch of bioinformatics that is related to the analysis and prediction of the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules such as proteins, RNA, and DNA. It deals with generalizations about macromolecular 3D structures such as comparisons of overall folds and local motifs, principles of molecular folding, evolution, binding interactions, and structure/function relationships, working both from experimentally solved structures and from computational models. The term structural has the same meaning as in structural biology, and structural bioinformatics can be seen as a part of computational structural biology. The main objective of structural bioinformatics is the creation of new methods of analysing and manipulating biological macromolecular data in order to solve problems in biology and generate new knowledge.
A chemical database is a database specifically designed to store chemical information. This information is about chemical and crystal structures, spectra, reactions and syntheses, and thermophysical data.
Chemical Markup Language is an approach to managing molecular information using tools such as XML and Java. It was the first domain specific implementation based strictly on XML, first based on a DTD and later on an XML Schema, the most robust and widely used system for precise information management in many areas. It has been developed over more than a decade by Murray-Rust, Rzepa and others and has been tested in many areas and on a variety of machines.
Molecular modelling encompasses all methods, theoretical and computational, used to model or mimic the behaviour of molecules. The methods are used in the fields of computational chemistry, drug design, computational biology and materials science to study molecular systems ranging from small chemical systems to large biological molecules and material assemblies. The simplest calculations can be performed by hand, but inevitably computers are required to perform molecular modelling of any reasonably sized system. The common feature of molecular modelling methods is the atomistic level description of the molecular systems. This may include treating atoms as the smallest individual unit, or explicitly modelling protons and neutrons with its quarks, anti-quarks and gluons and electrons with its photons.
Chemical table file is a family of text-based chemical file formats that describe molecules and chemical reactions. One format, for example, lists each atom in a molecule, the x-y-z coordinates of that atom, and the bonds among the atoms.
XDrawChem is a free software program for drawing chemical structural formulas, available for Unix and macOS. It is distributed under the GNU GPL. In Microsoft Windows this program is called WinDrawChem.
In the context of chemistry, molecular physics, physical chemistry, and molecular modelling, a force field is a computational model that is used to describe the forces between atoms within molecules or between molecules as well as in crystals. Force fields are a variety of interatomic potentials. More precisely, the force field refers to the functional form and parameter sets used to calculate the potential energy of a system on the atomistic level. Force fields are usually used in molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo simulations. The parameters for a chosen energy function may be derived from classical laboratory experiment data, calculations in quantum mechanics, or both. Force fields utilize the same concept as force fields in classical physics, with the main difference being that the force field parameters in chemistry describe the energy landscape on the atomistic level. From a force field, the acting forces on every particle are derived as a gradient of the potential energy with respect to the particle coordinates.
Jmol is computer software for molecular modelling chemical structures in 3-dimensions. Jmol returns a 3D representation of a molecule that may be used as a teaching tool, or for research e.g., in chemistry and biochemistry.
The Protein Data Bank (PDB) file format is a textual file format describing the three-dimensional structures of molecules held in the Protein Data Bank, now succeeded by the mmCIF format. The PDB format accordingly provides for description and annotation of protein and nucleic acid structures including atomic coordinates, secondary structure assignments, as well as atomic connectivity. In addition experimental metadata are stored. The PDB format is the legacy file format for the Protein Data Bank which has kept data on biological macromolecules in the newer PDBx/mmCIF file format since 2014.
ISIS/Draw was a chemical structure drawing program developed by MDL Information Systems. It introduced a number of file formats for the storage of chemical information that have become industry standards.
BALL is a C++ class framework and set of algorithms and data structures for molecular modelling and computational structural bioinformatics, a Python interface to this library, and a graphical user interface to BALL, the molecule viewer BALLView.
ChemXSeer project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is a public integrated digital library, database, and search engine for scientific papers in chemistry. It is being developed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers at the Pennsylvania State University. ChemXSeer was conceived by Dr. Prasenjit Mitra, Dr. Lee Giles and Dr. Karl Mueller as a way to integrate the chemical scientific literature with experimental, analytical, and simulation data from different types of experimental systems. The goal of the project is to create an intelligent search and database which will provide access to relevant data to a diverse community of users who have a need for chemical information. It is hosted on the World Wide Web at the College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University.
The program Coot is used to display and manipulate atomic models of macromolecules, typically of proteins or nucleic acids, using 3D computer graphics. It is primarily focused on building and validation of atomic models into three-dimensional electron density maps obtained by X-ray crystallography methods, although it has also been applied to data from electron microscopy.
Discovery Studio is a suite of software for simulating small molecule and macromolecule systems. It is developed and distributed by Dassault Systemes BIOVIA.
MBN Explorer is a software package for molecular dynamics simulations, structure optimization and kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. It is designed for multiscale computational analysis of structure and dynamics of atomic clusters and nanoparticles, biomolecules and nanosystems, nanostructured materials, different states of matter and various interfaces. The software has been developed by MBN Research Center.
The Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank is an open access repository of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic data from peptides, proteins, nucleic acids and other biologically relevant molecules. The database is operated by the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is supported by the National Library of Medicine. The BMRB is part of the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics and, since 2006, it is a partner in the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB). The repository accepts NMR spectral data from laboratories around the world and, once the data is validated, it is available online at the BMRB website. The database has also an ftp site, where data can be downloaded in the bulk. The BMRB has two mirror sites, one at the Protein Database Japan (PDBj) at Osaka University and one at the Magnetic Resonance Research Center (CERM) at the University of Florence in Italy. The site at Japan accepts and processes data depositions.
