Protein Data Bank Japan: Improved tools for sequence-oriented analysis of protein structures.

Protein Data Bank Japan (PDBj) is the Asian hub of three-dimensional macromolecular structure data, and a founding member of the worldwide Protein Data Bank. We have accepted, processed, and distributed experimentally determined biological macromolecular structures for over two decades. Although we collaborate with RCSB PDB and BMRB in the United States, PDBe and EMDB in Europe and recently PDBc in China for our data-in activities, we have developed our own unique services and tools for searching, exploring, visualizing and analyzing protein structures. We have recently introduced a new UniProt-integrated portal to provide users with a quick overview of their target protein and shows a recommended structure with integrated data from various internal and external resources. The portal page helps users identify known genomic variations of their protein of interest and provide insights into how these modifications might impact the structure, stability and dynamics of the protein. Furthermore, the portal page also helps users to select the optimal structure to use for further analysis. We have also introduced another service to explore proteins using experimental and computational approaches, which enables experimental structural biologists to increase their insight to help them to more efficiently design their experimental studies. With these new additions, we have enhanced our service portfolio to benefit both experimental and computational structural biologists in their search to interpret protein structures, their dynamics and function.