GenBank Overview
What is GenBank?
GenBank is the NIH genetic
sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available
DNA sequences ( Nucleic Acids
Research 1998 Jan 1;26(1):1-7). There are approximately
2,162,000,000 bases in
3,044,000 sequence records as of December 1998. As an example, you may
view the record for the
neurofibromatosis gene. The complete release notes for the current
version of GenBank are
available. A new release is made every two months. GenBank is part of the
International Nucleotide
Sequence Database Collaboration, which is comprised of the DNA DataBank
of Japan (DDBJ), the European
Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), and GenBank at NCBI. These
three organizations exchange
data on a daily basis.
Submissions to GenBank
Many journals require
submission of sequence information to a database prior to publication so
that an accession number may
appear in the paper. NCBI has a WWW form, called BankIt, for
convenient and quick
submission of sequence data. The beta-test version of Sequin, NCBI's new
stand-alone submission
software for MAC, PC, and UNIX platforms, is available by FTP. When using
Sequin, the output files for
direct submission should be sent to GenBank by electronic mail.
Alternatively, the data files
may be copied to a floppy disk and mailed to NCBI. Authorin, an
older stand-alone program for
MACs and PCs, can still be used to format your submission, although
submitters are encouraged to
switch to either BankIt or Sequin.