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.

image: pdb past and present
(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
Selected Presentations

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.