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The Protein Data Bank (PDB) (wwPDB consortium, 2019) is the single global archive of experimentally determined three-dimensional (3D) structure data of biological macromolecules. The continuing growth in the numbers, size and complexity of macromolecular structures in the PDB archive, coupled with the rapid growth of evolving experimental methods such as 3D cryo-electron microscopy (3DEM) has made the traditional PDB format (`legacy PDB format') inadequate for fully representing these data. Here, as described below, this format was based on a punched-card format that became obsolete long ago. In the following letter, we describe the changes necessary to address the challenges coming from the extraordinary success of structural biologists.
Adams et al. (Mon,) studied this question.