RCSB PDB Data Validation and Deposition Services

Welcome to the RCSB PDB Deposition Portal. For other deposition servers (PDBj, PDBe), please visit the wwPDB.
Returning users can begin by using the quick links above.

The following data deposition tools and instructions can make your structure deposition easy, complete and accurate:

Review wwPDB Policies and Procedures to be familiar with the latest format and deposition policy.
Gather information about the proteins/nucleic acids in your structure from sequence databases (e.g. using UniProtKB 1 or BLAST 2 ) or about your ligand (using Ligand Expo 3 ). Instructions will be provided during deposition to deposit new ligands. Collect log files from data processing, scaling, MR, refinement, etc. (pdb_extract can parse these files for you and gather sequence information for what was in the sample.)
Convert and Check crystallographic structure factors with SF-Tool. The deposited structure factor file should be the one that was used for the final refinement. It can either be in mmCIF, ASCII, or mtz formats and should at least include h, k, l, F, SigmaF (and/or I and SigmaI) and test flags. Definitions and format are available in DOC (48 KB) and PDF (24 KB) format.
Prepare your structural data for deposition using pdb_extract 4, which can extract information from log files and/or the desktop version of ADIT.

THEN

Validate your structure using our Validation Server.
Deposit your structure using ADIT, ADIT-NMR, or EMDB.

The Validation Server can also be used to monitor improvements made to your structural model before you begin the deposition process.

Detailed step-by-step instructions for individual structural methods are available. Instructions for X-ray crystallography structure depositions Notice for REFMAC users - details for generating total B factors when TLS used Instructions for NMR structure depositions Instructions for EM structure depositions More information on deposition of structures determined by other methods (including Electron diffraction, Fiber diffraction)
Tutorials: pdb_extract ADIT Ligand Expo Validation Structure Factor File Conversions Chemical Component Dictionary Content Description
Policies and Procedures wwPDB Policies wwPDB Procedures Data Processing and Annotation Procedures Manual (updated November 2009) : PDF version [ 3.0 Mb | requires Acrobat Reader ]

Questions, comments and suggestions should be sent to deposit@deposit.rcsb.org

1 The UniProt Consortium. (2008) "The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt)." Nucleic Acids Res. 36:D190-D195.
2 Altschul, S.F., Gish, W., Miller, W., Myers, E.W. & Lipman, D.J. (1990) "Basic local alignment search tool." J. Mol. Biol. 215:403-410.
3 Feng, Z., Chen, L., Maddula, H., Akcan, O., Oughtred, R., Berman, H.M., & Westbrook, J. (2004) " Ligand Depot: a data warehouse for ligands bound to macromolecules " Bioinformatics 20:2153-2155.
4 Yang, H., Guranovic, V., Dutta, S., Feng, Z., Berman, H.M., & Westbrook, J.D. (2004) " Automated and accurate deposition of structures solved by X-ray diffraction to the Protein Data Bank. " Acta Cryst. D60, 1833-1839.