dna databases

DDBJ (DNA Data Bank of Japan) began DNA data bank activities in earnest in 1986 at the National Institute of Genetics (NIG).
DDBJ has been functioning as the international nucleotide sequence database in collaboration with EBI/EMBL and NCBI/GenBank.
DNA sequence records the organismic evolution more directly than other biological materials and ,thus, is invaluable not only for research in life sciences, but also human welfare in general. The databases are, so to speak, a common treasure of human beings. With this in mind, we make the databases online accessible to anyone in the world. The EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (also known as EMBL-Bank) constitutes Europe's primary nucleotide sequence resource. Main sources for DNA and RNA sequences are direct submissions from individual researchers, genome sequencing projects and patent applications.

The database is produced in an international collaboration with GenBank (USA) and the DNA Database of Japan (DDBJ). Each of the three groups collects a portion of the total sequence data reported worldwide, and all new and updated database entries are exchanged between the groups on a daily basis. The current database release (Release 91, June 2007), with according Release notes and user manual are available from the EBI servers.
GenBank^® is the NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences . There are approximately 65,369,091,950 bases in 61,132,599 sequence records in the traditional GenBank divisions and 80,369,977,826 bases in 17,960,667 sequence records in the WGS division as of August 2006.

The complete release notes for the current version of GenBank are available on the NCBI ftp site. A new release is made every two months. GenBank is part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, which comprises 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.