International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration
The collaboration that exists among the International Nucleotide Sequence Databases has led to many beneficial projects that promise to proliferate in the molecular biology community.
GenBank, along with partners DDBJ and ENA, have launched www.insdc.org . This site presents the aims and policies of this long-established collaboration in gathering and publishing nucleotide sequence and annotation and links to the three partners' data submission and retrieval tools.
Currently, the following projects are part of the collaborative effort among the three databases:
The Taxonomy Project
One of the goals of the collaborators is to use a unified taxonomy across all databases, largely one based on sequence information. The taxonomy project was set up as a tool for biologists worldwide, and also as a shared instrument for the collaborators. This is one of the important resources used for the maintenance of Genetic Codes, important for the correct translation of coding sequences.
The Feature Table
The Feature Table documentation represents the shared rules that allow the three databases to exchange data on a daily basis. The Feature Table represent the vocabulary that is used to describe the DNA sequence annotations as well as that of the protein sequence(s) they encode.
The /db_xref Qualifier
The /db_xref qualifier allows the nucleotide databases to explicitly reference specific sequences (protein sequences) or other identifiers within other databases.
The /country Qualifier
The /country country qualifier indicates the
country of origin of a DNA sample. This qualifier uses a controlled
vocabulary and format.