Recent years have seen an
explosive growth in biological data. Large sequencing projects are producing
increasing quantities of nucleotide sequences. The contents of nucleotide
databases are doubling in size approximately every 14 months. The latest release
of GenBank (V.139) exceeded two billion base pairs. Not only the size of
sequence data is rapidly increasing, but also the number of characterized
genes from many organisms and protein structures doubles about every two
years. To cope with this great quantity of data, a new scientific discipline
has emerged: bioinformatics, biocomputing or computational biology
Entries Bases Species
10649134 12385903706 Homo sapiens
6753652 8049817803 Mus musculus
1267882 5747965742 Rattus norvegicus
1663937 3566605068 Bos taurus
1287702 2540551749 Danio rerio
2499723 1998269811 Zea mays
1149146 1500985768 Oryza sativa
226213 1251961979 Strongylocentrotus purpuratus
1236899 1075752229 Sus scrofa
1175934 961525020 Xenopus tropicalis
1426915 893771790 Canis familiaris
655519 845341580 Drosophila melanogaster
800633 770627209 Gallus gallus
1198209 758043364 Arabidopsis thaliana
209185 691252171 Pan troglodytes
868038 507883206 Triticum aestivum
397437 468939096 Medicago truncatula
784170 465881813 Sorghum bicolor
69335 463195893 Macaca mulatta
696319 421330392 Ciona intestinalis