GenBank

Summary: For most sequence searches, GenBank is your best bet. It offers a daily exchange of information with other major sequence databases, has a variety of user interfaces, fairly detailed online help (with e-mail addresses for more information if what is already available is not sufficient), and a speedy interface. Because of its popularity, however, GenBank can also be very slow during peak research hours. Very detailed searches or searches with massive amounts of output might be completed more quickly after hours.

Established by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), GenBank is a collection of all known DNA sequences from scientists around the world. As of July 1, 1996, approximately 286,000,000 bases and 352,400 sequences are stored in GenBank, and many more are added each day.

See dictionary entries for: [base sequence | DNA]

Searching GenBank is fairly straightforward and can be done with a variety of search tools. If you are using a forms-capable WWW browser (such as Netscape 1.0 or higher) and if you have never used GenBank before, you will probably want to start your search with a general query. Other means of searching GenBank include: We have provided an example for submitting a BLAST query to help you get started.

Submitting sequences to GenBank is also very easy and is required by most journals before articles pertaining to the sequence are published (this provides easy access to the information for the journal's readers). You can submit sequences via the WWW with BankIt.
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Last updated: July 23, 1998
URL: http://biotech.icmb.utexas.edu/pages/science/genbank.html
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