Biological Databases

What Is a Biological Database?

A biological database is a large, organized body of persistent data, usually associated with computerized software designed to update, query, and retrieve components of the data stored within the system. A simple database might be a single file containing many records, each of which includes the same set of information. For example, a record associated with a nucleotide sequence database typically contains information such as contact name, the input sequence with a description of the type of molecule, the scientific name of the source organism from which it was isolated, and often, literature citations associated with the sequence.
For researchers to benefit from the data stored in a database, two additional requirements must be met:
easy access to the information

a method for extracting only that information needed to answer a specific biological questionThe data in GenBank are made available in a variety of ways, each tailored to a particular use, such as data submission or sequence searching.



At NCBI, many of our databases are linked through a unique search and retrieval system, called Entrez. Entrez (pronounced ahn' tray) allows a user to not only access and retrieve specific information from a single database but to access integrated information from many NCBI databases. For example, the Entrez Protein database is cross-linked to the Entrez Taxonomy database. This allows a researcher to find taxonomic information (taxonomy is a division of the natural sciences that deals with the classification of animals and plants) for the species from which a protein sequence was derived.