DDBJ Activities: Contribution to the Research in Information Biology

Abstract

DDBJ (DNA Data Bank of Japan; "http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/":http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/)started its database activities in 1986. From the beginning, DDBJ has been one of INSDC (International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration; "http://www.insdc.org/":http://www.insdc.org/) that is a tripartite collaboration with EMBL-Bank/EBI and GenBank/NCBI.The total base number of the primary nucleotide sequence data collected and distributed by INSDC exceeded 100 Gbases in August 2005. Since then it took only three years for the total base number to be doubled (200 Gbases). Now, the collaboration is being expanded to Traces (DNA sequence chromatograms) and Short Reads (raw reads data from 454, Solexa, SOLiD etc). DDBJ is also collecting and releasing gene expression data at CIBEX (Center for Information Biology gene EXpression database; "http://cibex.nig.ac.jp/":http://cibex.nig.ac.jp/). Furthermore, DDBJ contributed to international annotation jamborees such as FANTOM (mouse), H-Inv (human), RAP (rice) and E. coli K12. DDBJ provides many services to the research in information biology or bioinformatics. They include Web-API for Biology (WABI) "http://www.xml.nig.ac.jp/":http://www.xml.nig.ac.jp/ and All-round Retrieval of Sequence and Annotation (ARSA) "http://arsa.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/":http://arsa.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/. These activities are presented with the perspective of DDBJ in the coming years