Database Commons

a catalog of worldwide biological databases

The Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism database (dbSNP) is a variation database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). It is a public repository of submitted nucleotide variations and is part of NCBI's search and retrieval system Entrez. This unit describes two basic protocols to search dbSNP effectively, one to perform a text-based search and another to perform a sequence-based search. The unit also describes one of the result display formats called GeneView to obtain information about all submitted SNPs in a particular gene.

While high quality information regarding variation in genes is currently available in locus-specific or specialized mutation databases, the need remains for a general catalog of genome variation to address the large-scale sampling designs required by association studies, gene mapping, and evolutionary biology. In response to this need, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has established the dbSNP database http://ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/SNP/ to serve as a generalized, central variation database. Submissions to dbSNP will be integrated with other sources of information at NCBI such as GenBank, PubMed, LocusLink, and the Human Genome Project data, and the complete contents of dbSNP are available to the public via anonymous FTP. Hum Mutat 15:68-75, 2000. Published 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.