GenBank
Say it: JEN-bank
GenBank is the public database of DNA and RNA sequences run by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, with annotated records free to use.
Definition
What is GenBank?
GenBank is the open nucleotide sequence database of the US National Institutes of Health, maintained by the National Library of Medicine's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). It holds billions of DNA and RNA sequences from more than half a million formally named species, as well as viruses and environmental samples, and NCBI places no restrictions on how the data are used.
Most entries come straight from researchers, who usually submit sequences before publishing so that papers can cite an accession number, a unique identifier that readers can look up. Each record is a flat file with a header naming the organism and source, a features table marking genes, coding regions and other annotated elements, and the sequence itself. GenBank is one of three partners in the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, with the DNA Data Bank of Japan and the European Nucleotide Archive, and the three exchange new data daily so that each holds the same records.
Students meet GenBank when they search the NCBI Nucleotide database, download a sequence in FASTA format or run BLAST against NCBI's sequence collections. Because entries are submitted rather than checked line by line by experts, errors and duplicates exist, and NCBI's separate RefSeq collection offers a curated, non-redundant set.
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Terms that go with it
- BLASTBLAST is a widely used program that searches databases for DNA or protein sequences similar to a query and ranks the matches by statistical significance.
- FASTA formatFASTA format is a plain-text format for DNA, RNA or protein sequences in which each record starts with a header line beginning with > followed by the sequence.
- BioinformaticsBioinformatics is the science of using computers to gather, store, analyze and share biological data, especially DNA, RNA and protein sequences.
- Genome annotationGenome annotation is the process of identifying where genes and other features lie in a genome sequence and describing what each of them does.
- Sequence alignmentSequence alignment is a way of lining up two or more DNA, RNA or protein sequences so that matching positions share a column, showing how similar they are.
- Next-generation sequencingNext-generation sequencing (NGS) is a set of high-throughput methods that read the sequences of millions of short DNA fragments in parallel.
Sources
Checked against
Written for biofideX in plain words, after checking these references:
- NCBI: GenBank Overview
- INSDC: About the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration
- Sayers et al. (2025), GenBank 2025 update, Nucleic Acids Research
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