Mission

Cryo electron microscopy (cryoEM) is a maturing methodology in structural biology that enables the determination of 3D structures of macromolecular complexes and cells from 2 to 100 Angstrom resolution with information that bridges the gap between cell biology and crystallography/NMR. 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 (see history). A joint effort among investigators of the Protein Databank in Europe (PDBe) at the European Bioinformatics Institute (*the original EMDB home*), the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) at Rutgers, and the National Center for Macromolecular Imaging (NCMI) 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 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.