National Center for Biotechnology Information
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is a part of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is located in Bethesda, Maryland and was founded in 1988 through legislation sponsored by Senator Claude Pepper.
The NCBI houses a series of databases relevant to biotechnology and biomedicine and is an important resource for bioinformatics tools and services. Major databases include GenBank for DNA sequences and PubMed, a bibliographic database for the biomedical literature. Other databases include the Protein Database, the Sequence Read Archive, and PubChem.
History[edit]
The NCBI was founded in 1988 to aid in the development and distribution of computational tools for understanding and interpreting genetic data. Its creation was part of a larger initiative by the United States Congress to promote research into the human genome.
Databases and Software[edit]
The NCBI provides a suite of computational tools, and maintains a number of databases for the biomedical and genomic research communities. These include:
- GenBank: The U.S. genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences.
- PubMed: A bibliographic database for the biomedical literature.
- PubChem: A public database of small molecules and their biological activities.
- BLAST: An algorithm for comparing primary biological sequence information.
- Entrez: A federated search engine for biomedical research.
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Logo of the National Center for Biotechnology Information
