PDB40: A Special Symposium Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Protein Data Bank

On October 28-30, 2011, a unique meeting was held at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the PDB. PDB40's distinguished speakers described structural biology's past as well as current research in related fields (program book PDF). Close to 100 posters were presented (abstract book PDF). Travel awards were made for 35 early career scientists from around the world.

(Photo by Constance Brukin)

Members of the PDB, past and present, in attendance at PDB40 (click for names).

Additional photographs are available from the CSHL photo gallery.

Related Publications

• Nature Structural & Molecular Biology published a special Essay Collection reflecting on the history and future of structural biology on the 40th anniversary of the PDB
• A PDB40 Meeting Report was published in Structure (2012) 20: 391 - 396 (PMC3501388)
• Biopolymers Special Issue: PDB40: The Protein Data Bank Celebrates its 40th Birthday
  Volume 99, Issue 3, pages 165-222, March 2013

Selected Presentations

• Growth, globalization, and future of the Protein Data Bank (PDF)
  Stephen K. Burley, Eli Lilly & Co.
• Challenges for structure determination at low resolution (PDF)
  Axel Brunger, Stanford University
• Remarks (PDF)
  Johann Deisenhofer, UT Southwestern Medical Center
• What is needed to make single particle EM reach its true potential? (PDF)
  Richard Henderson, MRC-LMB, Cambridge
• Studying and polishing the PDB's macromolecules (PDF)
  Jane Richardson, Duke University Medical Center
• A historical perspective (PDF)
  Michael Rossmann, Purdue University
• Integrative structure determination of macromolecular assemblies (PDF)
  Andrej Sali, University of California, San Francisco
• Macromolecular Linguistics (PDF)
  David Searls, Independent Consultant
• Abstracting Knowledge from Protein Structures for Biology in the 21st Century
  Janet Thornton, EMBL-EBI
• Structural biology by NMR and the Protein Data Bank
  Kurt Wüthrich, The Scripps Research Institute/ETH Zürich

Other speakers and presentations at the meeting included: Cheryl Arrowsmith (University of Toronto, Canada), Structural and chemical biology of the readers and writers of the histone code; David Baker (University of Washington) Scientific discovery by protein folding game players; Ad Bax (NIH/DHHS/NIDDK/LCP) An NMR view of the interaction between viral fusion proteins and phospholipids; Axel Brunger (Stanford University/HHMI) Challenges for structure determination at low resolution; Wah Chiu (Baylor College of Medicine) CryoEM of molecular machines; Richard Henderson (MRC Lab. of Molecular Biology, UK) What is needed to make single particle electron cryomicroscopy reach its true potential; Wayne Hendrickson (Columbia University) SLAC1 and the splendor of atomic resolution; Mei Hong (Iowa State University) Membrane protein solid-state NMR: Elucidating the influenza M2 structure and mechanism; Susan Taylor (University of California, San Diego) Evolution of protein kinases: Insights from the structural kinome; Soichi Wakatsuki (Institute of Materials Structure Science-KEK, Japan) Coevolution of synchrotron radiation technologies with protein X-ray crystallography.

PDB40 was organized by Helen M. Berman (RCSB PDB), Gerard Kleywegt (PDBe), Haruki Nakamura (PDBj), John Markley (BMRB), and Stephen K. Burley (wwPDB Advisory Committee and Eli Lilly & Company). Generous funding for the meeting and travel awards came from CSHL, the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Wellcome Trust, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and more than 20 industrial sponsors.