Database Commons

a catalog of worldwide biological databases

For more than 30 years, the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC; http://www.insdc.org/) has been committed to capturing, preserving and providing access to comprehensive public domain nucleotide sequence and associated metadata which enables discovery in biomedicine, biodiversity and biological sciences. Since 1987, the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) at the National Institute for Genetics in Mishima, Japan; the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK; and GenBank at National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA have worked collaboratively to enable access to nucleotide sequence data in standardized formats for the worldwide scientific community. In this article, we reiterate the principles of the INSDC collaboration and briefly summarize the trends of the archival content.

The International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC; http://www.insdc.org), one of the longest-standing global alliances of biological data archives, captures, preserves and provides comprehensive public domain nucleotide sequence information. Three partners of the INSDC work in cooperation to establish formats for data and metadata and protocols that facilitate reliable data submission to their databases and support continual data exchange around the world. In this article, the INSDC current status and update for the year of 2012 are presented. Among discussed items of international collaboration meeting in 2012, BioSample database and changes in submission are described as topics.

Under the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC; http://www.insdc.org), globally comprehensive public domain nucleotide sequence is captured, preserved and presented. The partners of this long-standing collaboration work closely together to provide data formats and conventions that enable consistent data submission to their databases and support regular data exchange around the globe. Clearly defined policy and governance in relation to free access to data and relationships with journal publishers have positioned INSDC databases as a key provider of the scientific record and a core foundation for the global bioinformatics data infrastructure. While growth in sequence data volumes comes no longer as a surprise to INSDC partners, the uptake of next-generation sequencing technology by mainstream science that we have witnessed in recent years brings a step-change to growth, necessarily making a clear mark on INSDC strategy. In this article, we introduce the INSDC, outline data growth patterns and comment on the challenges of increased growth.