A quick tutorial how to work with mmCIF files.

The mmCIF file format has been around for some time (see [Westbrook 2000][] and [Westbrook 2003][] ) [BioJava](http://www.biojava.org) has been supporting mmCIF already for several years. This tutorial is meant to provide a quick introduction into how to parse mmCIF files using [BioJava](http://www.biojava.org)

BioJava provides you with both a mmCIF parser and a data model that reads PDB and mmCIF files into a biological and chemically meaningful data model (BioJava supports the [Chemical Components Dictionary](mmcif.md)). If you don't want to use that data model, you can still use BioJava's file parsers, and more on that later, let's start first with the most basic way of loading a protein structure.

The simplest way to load a PDB file is by using the [StructureIO](http://www.biojava.org/docs/api/org/biojava/nbio/structure/StructureIO.html) class.

As you can see, the AtomCache will again download the missing mmCIF file for 4HHB in the background.

If you want to learn how to use the BioJava mmCIF parser to populate your own data structure, let's first take a look this lower-level code:

parser.addMMcifConsumer(myOwnConsumerImplementation);

BioJava provides a number of algorithms and visualisation tools that you can use to further analyse the structure, or look at it. Here a couple of suggestions for further reads:

+ [The BioJava Cookbook for protein structures](http://biojava.org/wiki/BioJava:CookBook#Protein_Structure)

+ How does BioJava [represent the content](structure-data-model.md) of a PDB/mmCIF file?

+ [How to work with Groups (AminoAcid, Nucleotide, Hetatom)](http://biojava.org/wiki/BioJava:CookBook:PDB:groups)

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