Crystallographic Information File (CIF) is a standard text file format for representing
crystallographic information, promulgated by the
International Union of Crystallography (IUCr). CIF was developed by the IUCr Working Party on Crystallographic Information in an effort sponsored by the IUCr Commission on Crystallographic Data and the IUCr Commission on Journals. The file format was initially published by Hall, Allen, and Brown
and has since been revised, most recently versions 1.1 and 2.0.
Full specifications for the format are available at the IUCr website. Many computer programs for molecular viewing are compatible with this format, including
Jmol.
Closely related is mmCIF, macromolecular CIF, which is intended as an alternative to the
Protein Data Bank (PDB) format. It is now the default format used by the
Protein Data Bank
The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is a database for the three-dimensional structural data of large biological molecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids. The data, typically obtained by X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, or, increasingly, c ...
.
Also closely related is Crystallographic Information Framework, a broader system of exchange protocols based on data dictionaries and relational rules expressible in different machine-readable manifestations, including, but not restricted to, Crystallographic Information File and
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. ...
.
References
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External links
International Union of Crystallography
Chemical file formats
Computer file formats
Crystallography