sent on behalf of the EMDATABANK.org team: The EM Databank (EMDB, http://www.emdatabank.org/) is a resource for the archival deposition and retrieval of EM maps and associated metadata. It was established in 2002 by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI, UK), and is now run jointly by EBI, the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB, USA), and the National Center for Macromolecular Imaging (NCMI) at Baylor College of Medicine.
Following the model of the wwPDB, development of EMDB policies and procedures is community-driven. The resource is advised by a panel of leading experts. This fall, an Electron Microscopy Validation Task Force (EM VTF) will be convened to make recommendations as to how best to assess the quality of both maps and models that have been obtained from cryo-EM data. Its recommendations will form the basis for a validation suite that will be used for maps and models deposited in the appropriate databases (EMDB and PDB). As seen by the history of the PDB, journal requirements can greatly influence data deposition. For articles reporting the results of electron microscopy studies, the rate of EM map deposition is higher for journals that have well-defined and consistently-enforced policies than for journals without deposition requirements. We have recently contacted journals that publish EM studies to encourage them to include a deposition policy for EM structural data in the instructions to Authors, and we are continuing to follow up with them. Currently, depositors may choose to release deposited data immediately, upon publication (selected by the majority), after 1 year, or after 2 years. The 1 and 2 year holds are intended to encourage EM scientists to deposit maps by providing a time period in which they can perform additional studies/analyses before the map is made public. Based upon community feedback, the option to hold a map for 4 years was retired in 2008. Questions about the EMDB may be sent to h...@emdatabank.org.
