EMDataBank.org

Cryo electron microscopy (cryoEM) is a maturing methodology in structural biology that enables the determination of 3-D structures of macromolecular complexes and cells from 2 to 100 Angstrom resolution with information that bridges the gap between cell biology and crystallography/NMR. In the past three years a community consensus has been reached that it is time to establish publicly supported, one-stop deposition and retrieval facilities for cryoEM density maps, atomic models and associated metadata. A joint effort among investigators of the Macromolecular Structure Database Group at the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics at Rutgers, and the National Center for Macromolecular Imaging at Baylor College of Medicine, we aim to integrate the expertise and infrastructure of these well-established research centers to create a global deposition and retrieval network for cryoEM map, model and associated metadata, as well as a portal for a number of software tools for standardized map format conversion, map, segmentation and model assessment, visualization, and data integration. We envision these tools as an essential step in the verification of the deposited data, while concurrently facilitating the efficient use of the archived data.