Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information

This paper describes the database resources maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a large suite of online tools for biological information. Core resources include the GenBank nucleic acid sequence database and the PubMed database of citations and abstracts for life science journals. The Entrez system provides search and retrieval across 39 distinct databases, the E-utilities serve as its programming interface, and custom implementations of BLAST are optimized to search specialized data sets.

The paper highlights resources released in the past year, including PubMed Data Management, RefSeq Functional Elements, genome data download, a variation services API, Magic-BLAST, QuickBLASTp, and Identical Protein Groups. It also notes updates to existing resources such as the genome data viewer, a human genome resources page, Gene, virus variation, OSIRIS, and PubChem. All resources are accessible through the NCBI home page, underscoring NCBI's role as central infrastructure for biological data access.