The Molecular Modeling DataBase (MMDB), also known as Entrez Structure, is a database of experimentally determined structures obtained from the RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB). MMDB is developed by the Structure Group of the NCBI Computational Biology Branch. The data processing procedure at NCBI results in the addition of a number of useful features that facilitate computation on the data and link them to many other data types in the Entrez system.
The structure database is considerably smaller than Entrez's Protein or Nucleotide databases, but a large fraction of all known protein sequences have homologs in this set, and one may often learn more about a protein by examining 3-D structures of its homologs. These are accessible as Related Structures in the Links menu of Entrez Protein sequence records (illustrated example). It is then possible to align the query protein to the structure-based sequence, as shown in the illustration on this page.
Additional resources can be used along with MMDB to interactively view the structures, find similar 3D structures, learn about the types of interactions and bound chemicals that have been found to exist among the similar 3D structures, and more.
Resource Type: Resource
Version: Latest Version
macromolecule, structure, 3d spatial image, protein structure, gold standard
Entrez Structure, Structure database, NCBI Structure, Structure (Molecular Modeling Database)
Additional Resource Types
Created 4 years ago by Anonymous
- Wang Y
- Nucleic Acids Res.
- 2007 4
Three-dimensional (3D) structure is now known for a large fraction of all protein families. Thus, it has become rather likely that one will find a homolog with known 3D structure when searching a sequence database with an arbitrary query sequence. Depending on the extent of similarity, such neighbor relationships may allow one to infer biological function and to identify functional sites such as binding motifs or catalytic centers. Entrez's 3D-structure database, the Molecular Modeling Database (MMDB), provides easy access to the richness of 3D structure data and its large potential for functional annotation. Entrez's search engine offers several tools to assist biologist users: (i) links between databases, such as between protein sequences and structures, (ii) pre-computed sequence and structure neighbors, (iii) visualization of structure and sequence/structure alignment. Here, we describe an annotation service that combines some of these tools automatically, Entrez's 'Related Structure' links. For all proteins in Entrez, similar sequences with known 3D structure are detected by BLAST and alignments are recorded. The 'Related Structure' service summarizes this information and presents 3D views mapping sequence residues onto all 3D structures available in MMDB (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=structure).