50 Years Later…
When Olga Kennard began collecting crystal structures in 1965, she believed that the collective use of experimental data would lead to the discovery of new knowledge which transcends the results of individual experiments. I hope she will be proud of how the collection she began is playing such a pivotal role in chemistry research world-wide in the 21st century. I am certainly looking forward to hearing her talk at our CSD50 symposium this week.
Crystallography is a unique discipline in that crystallographers share their research results as a matter of course. Since the inception of the CSD in 1965, the CCDC has fully played its role in sharing this data and we are able to make the entire collection of over 780,000 entries available to all scientists across the world. As well as helping you ensure your research results are made accessible to everyone, we’ve developed analysis software that enables experimental data to be turned into insights that really help scientists make informed decisions. Today, the CSD is used in virtually every chemistry laboratory - both academic and industrial – for primary research, drug discovery and development, materials science and more.
We are predicting that around 70,000 structures will have been added to the CSD this year but that really does depend on how many you publish or share with us - we are ready and waiting! You could also help us share one million structures with the world earlier than we are currently predicting, by following Frank’s lead and digging out your unpublished structures, too.
One of the latest structures added to the CSD this week is OJEGIV a bicyclo[3.2.1]octadienone scaffold in naturally occurring octaketide dimers (Yoshio Ando, Subaru Hori, Takumi Fukazawa, Ken Ohmori, Keisuke Suzuki, Angewandte Chemie, International Edition, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201503442). The corresponding publication highlights a new method for constructing the bicyclo[3.2.1]octadienone structure which serves as the core unit in the naphthocyclinone class of dimeric natural products.
As the diversity of the structures we receive increases so we see other trends as we process structures into the CSD. For example did you know that the number of structures containing atoms modelled over disordered sites is still increasing steadily? If you carry on at present rates then 50% of the structures deposited by 2055 will be disordered. One thing that does seem to be constant now is the average R-factor for new structures. Since the 1990’s, this has been roughly constant at 5%, so it appears you have collectively agreed on what an acceptable R-factor is!
Thank you to everyone who has contributed their data over the past half century, helping to create a resource of enormous value. Let’s raise a glass to the next 50!
You can download our CSD50 commemorative Newsletter and check out the recorded presentations from CSD50 symposium at www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/CSD50
Suzanna Ward
Cambridge Structural Database Manager
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