Creating a community resource for protein science

Helen Berman is the recipient of the Protein Society 2012 Carl Branden Award In addition to being one of the early pioneers in protein crystallography, Carl Branden made significant contributions to science education with his elegant and beautifully illustrated book Introduction to Protein Structure (Branden and Tooze, New York: Garland, 1991). It is truly an honor to receive this award in their names. This award and the 40th anniversary of the Protein Data Bank (PDB; Berman et al., Structure 2012;20:391396) have given me an opportunity to reflect on the various components that have contributed to building a resource for protein science and to try to quantify the impact of having PDB data openly available.