The EMBL nucleotide sequence database

The EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (http:// www.ebi.ac.uk/embI/) is main tained at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in an international c ollaboration with the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) and GenBank at the NCBI (USA). Data is exchanged amongst the collaborating databases on a daily ba sis. The major contributors to the EMBL database are individual authors and genome project groups. Webin is the preferred web-based submission system for individual submitters, whilst automatic procedures allow incorporation of sequence data from targe-scale genome sequencing centres and from the Eu ropean Patent Office (EPO). Database releases are produced quarterly. Netwo rk services allow free access to the most up-to-date data collection via ft p, email and World Wide Web interfaces, EBI's Sequence Retrieval System (SR S), a network browser for databanks in molecular biology, integrates and li nks the main nucleotide and protein databases plus many specialized databas es. For sequence similarity searching a variety of tools (e.g. Blitz, Fasta , BLAST) are available which allow external users to compare their own sequ ences against the latest data in the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database and SWISS-PROT.