NCBI, part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), is excited to announce our new Beta homepage! It represents the first phase of a multi-year effort to modernize many pages on our website. We are working to improve your experience so you can find and access NCBI resources quickly and easily.   What’s new?  The Beta homepage and several other Beta … Continue reading Now Available! Preview the NCBI Beta Homepage Today →

26 March 2026

To ensure the security and long-term stability of our data delivery infrastructure, NCBI will discontinue support for the rsync protocol on June 1, 2026. After June 1, attempts to connect to ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov using rsync will fail.  What do you need to do?  Please review your automated scripts and pipelines for any rsync calls and replace them with alternative tools.   FTP and HTTPS access will remain available, but if you’re using rsync you … Continue reading NCBI Will Retire rsync Support for FTP Downloads on June 1, 2026  →

25 March 2026

RefSeq release 234 is now available online and from the FTP site! You can access RefSeq data through NCBI Datasets. The release is provided in several directories as a complete dataset and also as divided by logical groupings.     What’s included in this release?   As of March 16, 2026, this full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data containing:    598,345,955 records   459,415,871 proteins   78,720,166 RNAs   Sequences from 176,395 organisms   … Continue reading Now Available: RefSeq Release 234  →

24 March 2026

NCBI, with other members of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), has established minimal criteria for accepting nucleotide sequence data into GenBank® and the Sequence Read Archive (SRA). We developed these specifications to ensure that data submitted to any INSDC member database meets a consistent baseline level of quality. We worked closely with the … Continue reading NCBI Adopts INSDC Minimal Specifications for GenBank and SRA →

18 March 2026

We invite you to try the redesigned NCBI Taxonomy Browser, developed with input from our user community. In Summer 2026, the legacy Taxonomy Browser will redirect to the new browser in NCBI Datasets. We will fully transition to the new browser in Fall 2026. Legacy FTP and E-utilities access will remain available for existing programmatic workflows, but we encourage … Continue reading Changes Coming to NCBI Taxonomy: Try the New Browser →

11 March 2026

A new version (v1.5) of Matched Annotation from NCBI and EMBL-EBI (MANE) is now available. This dataset, produced in collaboration between NCBI and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), includes a total of 19,437 MANE Select transcripts for 19,367 protein-coding and 70 non-coding genes. There are also MANE Plus Clinical transcripts for 73 genes.   What’s new?  In response to requests from clinical expert groups, we … Continue reading MANE v1.5 Released! →

10 March 2026

GenBank release 270.0 (2/18/2026) is now available on the NCBI FTP site. This release has 51.56 trillion bases and 6.12 billion records.  The current release has:   260,943,419 traditional records containing 7,010,340,901,567 base pairs of sequence data  4,620,211,924 WGS records containing 43,580,847,616,334 base pairs of sequence data  1,046,996,602 bulk-oriented TSA records containing 889,101,948,297 base pairs of sequence data  191.365,090 bulk-oriented TLS records containing 79,162,820,303 base pairs of sequence data  What’s new?  During the 66 days between … Continue reading GenBank Release 270.0 →

5 March 2026

With a new tool to compare clinical genetic tests!  NCBI is pleased to announce an improved search and navigation experience in the NIH Genetic Testing Registry (GTR®). We previously highlighted a number of updates during the Beta phase of implementation— thank you for your feedback during this time. All updates are now live in GTR!  What’s new?  One search box for single … Continue reading Now Live: Genetic Testing Registry (GTR®) Search Improvements →

4 March 2026

Enhancing Functional Data Submission   The ClinVar team is excited to announce updates to the ClinVar Submission API for improved representation of functional data. A previous blog post described these improvements for functional data in file submissions, downloadable FTP files, and our website.   What’s new?  The Submission API schema has been updated! If you generate functional data for variants, you can now use the Submission API … Continue reading Update to ClinVar’s Submission API →

2 March 2026

RefSeq release 233 is now available online and from the FTP site! You can access RefSeq data through NCBI Datasets. The release is provided in several directories as a complete dataset and also as divided by logical groupings.    What’s included in this release?  As of January 26, 2026, this full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data containing:   578,285,616 records  442,943,508 proteins  … Continue reading Now Available: RefSeq Release 233 →

19 February 2026