History of DNA sequence database

Question

Describe the History of DNA sequence database.

Answer 1

History of sequence DBs:

In the early 1960’s Margaret Dayhoff and colleagues at PIR collected all known protein sequences and published them in the “Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure”.

Nucleotide sequences were also included in the Atlas.

By 1972 the amount of data in the Atlas became so large that an electronic form of the Atlas was distributed on magnetic tapes.

In 1982, EMBL created a new DNA sequence database (EMBL-Bank) in Europe, followed closely by the creation of GenBank in the US.

Both EMBL-Bank and GenBank transcribed and interpreted what was published in print journals to an electronic format so they could be used in computerised form.

DDBJ was developed in Japan a few years later.

In 1988 EMBL-Bank, GenBank, and DDBJ formed INSDC (International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration), still a strong collaboration today.