About

Structures, names and facts on the Build page come from the Protein Data Bank, through the RCSB Protein Data Bank, and are shown as deposited. The short name beside each ID and the labels in the 3D view may be shortened, only where the meaning stays the same; names deposited in capitals are shown there in title case.

A few molecules on the Build page also have a short story, written for this site and footnoted sentence by sentence to its entry and to PDB-101, the RCSB PDB’s educational site.

For a membrane protein, the Build page can show where it sits in its membrane: the position calculated by OPM (Orientations of Proteins in Membranes), used only where OPM’s model is exactly the structure shown. Its sides are named only where UniProt confirms them, matched residue by residue through PDBe’s SIFTS mapping; UniProt’s evidence for each is listed with the molecule’s references.

Small molecules on the Build page come from the Protein Data Bank’s Chemical Component Dictionary and from PubChem, the NIH’s free chemistry database, and are shown with the 3D coordinates and bonds their source gives: the source’s calculated shape, or, where that is missing or can’t be used, a measured (experimental) shape, marked as such.

Facts on the Learn page and the home page are footnoted to their sources: the free OpenStax textbooks Biology 2e and Anatomy and Physiology 2e, Cell Biology by the Numbers (Milo and Phillips), and research papers, listed on the Learn page.

PDB data is freely available under CC0 1.0. NCBI itself places no restrictions on the use of PubChem’s data, though some original submitters may claim rights to theirs.