The Biological Macromolecule Crystallization Database

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the Biological Macromolecule Crystallization Database (BMCD) catalogs and summarizes the information concerning crystallization that is available in the literature as an aid in the development of crystallization strategies to produce large single crystals suitable for X-ray structural investigations. The BMCD also has become the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Protein Crystal Growth (PCG) Archive, providing access to details and results of crystallization experiments undertaken in microgravity. The BMCD includes data for all classes of biological macromolecules for which diffraction-quality crystals have been obtained and reported in the literature. These include peptides, proteins, protein–protein complexes, nucleic acids, nucleic acid–nucleic acid complexes, protein–nucleic acid complexes, and viruses. The information contained in the BMCD can be divided into three major categories: biological macromolecule, crystallization, and summary and reference data. The data are organized into separate entries for biological macromolecules and for crystal forms. Each biological macromolecule in the database has a unique biopolymer sequence.