Use of molecular variation in the NCBI dbSNP database

While high quality information regarding variation in genes is currently av ailable in locus-specific or specialized mutation databases, the need remai ns for a general catalog of genome variation to address the large scale sam pling designs required by association studies, gene mapping, and evolutiona ry 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. H um Mutat 15:68-75, 2000, Published 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.dagger