RCSB PDB Mobile: iOS and Android mobile apps to provide data access and visualization to the RCSB Protein Data Bank.

SUMMARY: The Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank (RCSB PDB) resource provides tools for query, analysis and visualization of the 3D structures in the PDB archive. As the mobile Web is starting to surpass desktop and laptop usage, scientists and educators are beginning to integrate mobile devices into their research and teaching. In response, we have developed the RCSB PDB Mobile app for the iOS and Android mobile platforms to enable fast and convenient access to RCSB PDB data and services. Using the app, users from the general public to expert researchers can quickly search and visualize biomolecules, and add personal annotations via the RCSB PDB's integrated MyPDB service. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: RCSB PDB Mobile is freely available from the Apple App Store and Google Play (http://www.rcsb.org).

The RCSB Protein Data Bank: new resources for research and education.

The Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank (RCSB PDB) develops tools and resources that provide a structural view of biology for research and education. The RCSB PDB web site (http://www.rcsb.org) uses the curated 3D macromolecular data contained in the PDB archive to offer unique methods to access, report and visualize data. Recent activities have focused on improving methods for simple and complex searches of PDB data, creating specialized access to chemical component data and providing domain-based structural alignments. New educational resources are offered at the PDB-101 educational view of the main web site such as Author Profiles that display a researcher's PDB entries in a timeline. To promote different kinds of access to the RCSB PDB, Web Services have been expanded, and an RCSB PDB Mobile application for the iPhone/iPad has been released. These improvements enable new opportunities for analyzing and understanding structure data.

The RCSB Protein Data Bank: redesigned web site and web services.

The RCSB Protein Data Bank (RCSB PDB) web site (http://www.pdb.org) has been redesigned to increase usability and to cater to a larger and more diverse user base. This article describes key enhancements and new features that fall into the following categories: (i) query and analysis tools for chemical structure searching, query refinement, tabulation and export of query results; (ii) web site customization and new structure alerts; (iii) pair-wise and representative protein structure alignments; (iv) visualization of large assemblies; (v) integration of structural data with the open access literature and binding affinity data; and (vi) web services and web widgets to facilitate integration of PDB data and tools with other resources. These improvements enable a range of new possibilities to analyze and understand structure data. The next generation of the RCSB PDB web site, as described here, provides a rich resource for research and education.

Word add-in for ontology recognition: semantic enrichment of scientific literature.

BACKGROUND: In the current era of scientific research, efficient communication of information is paramount. As such, the nature of scholarly and scientific communication is changing; cyberinfrastructure is now absolutely necessary and new media are allowing information and knowledge to be more interactive and immediate. One approach to making knowledge more accessible is the addition of machine-readable semantic data to scholarly articles. RESULTS: The Word add-in presented here will assist authors in this effort by automatically recognizing and highlighting words or phrases that are likely information-rich, allowing authors to associate semantic data with those words or phrases, and to embed that data in the document as XML. The add-in and source code are publicly available at http://www.codeplex.com/UCSDBioLit. CONCLUSIONS: The Word add-in for ontology term recognition makes it possible for an author to add semantic data to a document as it is being written and it encodes these data using XML tags that are effectively a standard in life sciences literature. Allowing authors to mark-up their own work will help increase the amount and quality of machine-readable literature metadata.

Quality assurance for the query and distribution systems of the RCSB Protein Data Bank.

The RCSB Protein Data Bank (RCSB PDB, www.pdb.org) is a key online resource for structural biology and related scientific disciplines. The website is used on average by 165,000 unique visitors per month, and more than 2000 other websites link to it. The amount and complexity of PDB data as well as the expectations on its usage are growing rapidly. Therefore, ensuring the reliability and robustness of the RCSB PDB query and distribution systems are crucially important and increasingly challenging. This article describes quality assurance for the RCSB PDB website at several distinct levels, including: (i) hardware redundancy and failover, (ii) testing protocols for weekly database updates, (iii) testing and release procedures for major software updates and (iv) miscellaneous monitoring and troubleshooting tools and practices. As such it provides suggestions for how other websites might be operated.