The protein circular dichroism data bank, a Web-based site for access to circular dichroism spectroscopic data

The Protein Circular Dichroism Data Bank (PCDDB) is a newly released resource for structural biology. It is a web-accessible (http://pcddb.cryst.bbk.ac.uk) data bank for circular dichroism (CD) and synchrotron radiation circular dichroism (SRCD) spectra and their associated experimental and secondary metadata, with links to protein sequence and structure data banks. It is designed to provide a public repository for CD spectroscopic data on macromolecules, to parallel the Protein Data Bank (PDB) for crystallographic, electron microscopic, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic data. Similarly to the PDB, it includes validation checking procedures to ensure good practice and the integrity of the deposited data. This paper reports on the first public release of the PCDDB, which provides access to spectral data that comprise standard reference datasets.