PAST: fast structure-based searching in the PDB

PAST is a new web service providing fast structural queries of the Protein Data Bank. The search engine is based on an adaptation of the generalized suffix tree and relies on a translation- and rotation-invariant representation of the protein backbone. The search procedure is completely independent of the amino acid sequence of the polypeptide chains. The web service works best with, but is not necessarily limited to, shorter fragments such as functional motifs—a task that most other tools do not perform well. Usual query times are in the order of seconds, allowing a truly interactive use. Unlike most established tools, PAST does not prefilter the dataset or exclude parts of the search space based on statistical reasoning. The server is freely available at .