What is "genbank"

The GenBank sequence database is an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. This database is produced and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) as part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC). The National Center for Biotechnology Information is a part of the National Institutes of Health in the United States. GenBank and its collaborators receive sequences produced in laboratories throughout the world from more than 100,000 distinct organisms. In more than 30 years since its establishment, GenBank has become the most important and most influential database for research in almost all biological fields, whose data are accessed and cited by millions of researchers around the world. GenBank continues to grow at an exponential rate, doubling every 18 months. Release 194, produced in February 2013, contained over 150 billion nucleotide bases in more than 162 million sequences. GenBank is built by direct submissions from individual laboratories, as well as from bulk submissions from large-scale sequencing centers.