The EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Nucleotide Sequence Databa se (http://www.ebi.ac. uk/embl/index.html) is maintained at the European Bi oinformatics Institute (EBI) in an international collaboration with the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) and GenBank (USA), Data is exchanged amongst the collaborative databases on a daily basis, The-major contributors to the EM BL database ape individual authors and genome project groups. WEBIN is the preferred web-based submission system for individual submitters, whilst aut omatic procedures allow incorporation of sequence data from large-scale gen ome sequencing centres and from the European Patent Office (EPO), Database releases are produced quarterly, Network services allow free access to the most up-to-date data collection via Internet and WWW interfaces, EBI's Sequ ence Retrieval System (SRS) is a network browser for databanks in molecular biology, integrating and linking the main nucleotide and protein databases plus many specialised databases. For sequence similarity searching a varie ty of tools (e.g., BLITZ, FASTA, BLAST) are available which allow external users to compare their own sequences against the most currently available d ata in the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database and SWISS-PROT.