News
19-August-2008
IUCr: wwPDB Exhibition Stand and Presentations

wwPDB

The wwPDB partners will be exhibiting at the XXI Congress & General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr; August 23 - 31 in Osaka, Japan) at booth #14. Please stop by for website demonstrations and to meet with wwPDB members from around the globe.

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The RCSB PDB provides a variety of tools and resources for studying the structures of biological macromolecules and their relationships to sequence, function, and disease.

The RCSB is a member of the wwPDB whose mission is to ensure that the PDB archive remains an international resource with uniform data.

This site offers tools for browsing, searching, and reporting that utilize the data resulting from ongoing efforts to create a more consistent and comprehensive archive.

Information about compatible browsers can be found here.

A narrated tutorial illustrates how to search, navigate, browse, generate reports and visualize structures using this new site. [This requires the Macromedia Flash player download.]

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Molecule of the Month: Selenocysteine Synthase
If you have visited your local health food store or looked closely at the ingredients in your daily multivitamin, you may have noticed that the element selenium is often listed as one of the beneficial supplements. Selenium is a double-edged sword, however. In general, selenium compounds are toxic and have an unpleasant garlicy odor, but in trace amounts, selenium is essential for our health. Selenium atoms are similar to sulfur atoms, with similar properties, except that selenium compounds tend to be more reactive. In a few specialized proteins, this extra reactivity is just what is needed. For instance, by using a selenium atom instead of sulfur, thioredoxin reductase improves its rate of catalysis by 100 times, and formate dehydrogenases act 300 times faster.
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The RCSB PDB is managed by two members of the RCSB: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and the San Diego Supercomputer Center and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. It is supported by funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), the Office of Science, Department of Energy (DOE), the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).