Package: genbank [edit]

Metadata:

Notes:

Description

From the main page:

GenBank® is the NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences (Nucleic Acids Research, 2008 Jan;36(Database issue):D25-30). There are approximately 85,759,586,764 bases in 82,853,685 sequence records in the traditional GenBank divisions and 108,635,736,141 bases in 27,439,206 sequence records in the WGS division as of February 2008.

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.

Openness: NOT OPEN (partial)

  • License: Not Open as may be patent/reuse restrictions. However does seem likely that one can freely reuse the db itself (just not able to apply said data in some contexts). Specifically 'Data Usage' section on main page states: "The GenBank database is designed to provide and encourage access within the scientific community to the most up to date and comprehensive DNA sequence information. Therefore, NCBI places no restrictions on the use or distribution of the GenBank data. However, some submitters may claim patent, copyright, or other intellectual property rights in all or a portion of the data they have submitted. NCBI is not in a position to assess the validity of such claims, and therefore cannot provide comment or unrestricted permission concerning the use, copying, or distribution of the information contained in GenBank."
  • Access: good. For details of options see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/GenbankSearch.html
    • api: yes.
    • www: yes.
    • bulk: yes.