More than 30 years after its initial discovery, in 2008, three independent structural projects of VDAC-1 were completed. The first was solved by multi-dimensional NMR spectroscopy. The second applied a hybrid approach using crystallographic data. The third was for mouse VDAC-1 crystals determined by X-ray crystallographic techniques. The three projects of the 3D structures of VDAC-1 revealed many structural features. First, VDAC-1 represents a new structural class of outer membrane β-barrel proteins with an odd number of strands. Another aspect is that the negatively charged side chain of residue E73 is oriented towards the hydrophobic membrane environment. The 19-stranded 3D structure obtained under different experimental sources by three different laboratories fits the EM and AFM data from native membrane sources and represents a biologically relevant state of VDAC-1.