The purpose of the Metalloprotoein Site Database has been stated in the text of Project III. Quoting from there:

(...) Provide researchers and designers Web-accessible quantitative structural and theoretical data to complement the several existing Metalloprotein qualitative and expository Web pages, such as the Leed's "Promise" site, and Project I's (Chazin) EF-hand CaBP Site Library.

The searchable database will index a growing number of metal sites ( for which) we (will) define appropriate categories for quantitative as well as qualitative searching (...)

At the same time, we are learning how to provide effective display and measurements of the sites. The database has developed since its inception (in January 1998), to include a complete indexing of metal-containing sites in all the proteins of the Protein Data Bank distribution. This information is contained in the MDB database, and can be searched via different interfaces. The interactive interface you are using being but one of them.

The "Edited" database, contains about 50 hand-selected entries and has not been developed to the extent that the "Raw" database has. It will be expanded to include, at least one example of each class of protein metal sites, alogn with functional information.

To achieve this goal, rules and algorithms for automated site recognition and classification are being refined and develop, as our understanding of the structural characteristics of these metal sites increases.

Computation Core associate Jesus M. Castagnetto is creating this content and classification algorithms; the Graphics Core will make enhancements to the interactive molecular viewer, to allow seamless and platform independent tools for the study of a large number of metal sites.

The database and its browser interface are the first step towards the development of distributed tools that will allow, not only to view existing metal binding sites and compare them, but also design new ones and test structural hypotheses.