National Center for Biotechnology Information

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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 | edit source]

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 | edit source]

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.

See Also[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]


External Links[edit | edit source]

National Center for Biotechnology Information Resources

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Contributors: Prab R. Tumpati, MD