INFORMATION RESOURCES AT THE NATIONAL-CENTER-FOR-BIOTECHNOLOGY-INFORMATION

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), part of the National Library of Medicine, was established in 1988 to perform basic research in the field of computational molecular biology as well as b uild and distribute molecular biology databases. The basic research ha s led to new algorithms and analysis tools for interpreting genomic da ta and has been instrumental in the discovery of human disease genes f or neurofibromatosis and Kallmann syndrome. The principal database res ponsibility is the National Institutes of Health (NIH) genetic sequenc e database, GenBank(R). NCBI, in collaboration with international part ners, builds, distributes, and provides online and CD-ROM access to ov er 112,000 DNA sequences. Another major program is the integration of multiple sequences databases and related bibliographic information and the development of network-based retrieval systems for Internet acces s.