"All things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other" — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.

Membrane contact site (MCS) is defined as an area of close apposition (from 10 to 80 nm) between the membranes of two organelles that are physically connected via proteinaceous tethers but do not fuse, which play a key role in coordinating cellular inter-organelle interaction and communication. Herein, we developed MCSdb, a manually curated database of experimentally supported MCS proteins and complexes from publications. The current version of MCSdb documents approximately 7,000 manually curated MCS protein entries with experimental evidence, involving 24 organelles and 44 MCSs across 11 species. In summary, MCSdb provides a convenient and user-friendly interface for querying, manipulating, browsing and visualizing detailed information about these proteins and complexes residing in MCSs and will greatly promote MCS structural and functional research and interorganelle communication deciphering.

Please cite us: MCSdb, a database of proteins residing in membrane contact sites, Scientific Data, 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41597-024-03104-7