Are you heading to ASM BIG (Bioinformatics, Genomics, and Big Data Conference) in Washington, DC this fall? If so, make sure to register for the workshop hosted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) as part of the pre-conference activities. This workshop, Empowering Your Microbial Research with Expert Tools and Resources: Unlock the Power of NCBI … Continue reading Register for NCBI’s Pre-Conference Workshop at ASM BIG 2026 →

1 September 2026

NCBI Virus is excited to announce the launch of a web interface for Viral Annotation DefineR (VADR). Web VADR can be used to validate and annotate virus sequence data using a web interface and does not require any command line setup like the standalone version. You can upload sequences through the web interface, start a VADR run, and download the results when … Continue reading Interactive Annotation for Viruses Using VADR →

31 August 2026

NLM’s NCBI is excited to share the modernized look and functionality of two tools used for protein structure research: Structure Summary Pages and the Vector Alignment Search Tool (VAST). The updated versions are available to try now and will fully replace the current versions in October.  Structure Summary Pages show basic information about macromolecular structures and offer detailed 3D … Continue reading A Fresh Look for Exploring 3D Protein Structures and Finding Related Proteins →

20 August 2026

We are excited to introduce the new NCBI Taxonomy, with updated tools and resources to improve how you browse taxonomic information and access NCBI data, including sequences, genomes, and other resources. Highlights of the redesigned site include the Taxonomy Browser, Common Tree, and Taxonomy name/ID check status tool.  What’s new?  Redesigned Taxonomy Browser  As previously announced, the new Taxonomy Browser provides search autosuggestions, more informed navigation, flexible tree views, and … Continue reading NCBI Taxonomy Has a New Home →

19 August 2026

GenBank release 273.0 (8/15/2026) is now available on the NCBI FTP site. This release has 60.07 trillion bases and 6.68 billion records.  The current release has:   267,383,895 traditional records containing 8,236,878,868,450 base pairs of sequence data 5,132,699,813 WGS records containing 50,829,714,144,609 base pairs of sequence data 1,082,802,170 bulk-oriented TSA records containing 923,937,913,366 base pairs of … Continue reading GenBank Release 273.0 is Available! →

17 August 2026

Download the updated bacterial and archaeal reference genome collection! We built this collection of 23,519 genomes by selecting the “best” genome assembly for each species among the 500,000+ prokaryotic genomes in RefSeq.   What’s new?   Twenty-one species are represented in this collection for the first time   114 species are represented by a better assembly  Eight species were removed because of changes in NCBI Taxonomy … Continue reading Now Available: Updated Bacterial and Archaeal Reference Genome Collection →

13 August 2026

NCBI’s BioCollections is a curated database of metadata for institutions that house specimens, cultures, and other biological materials. These institutions include museums, herbaria, stock centers, and culture collection centers. Each BioCollections record describes an institution and its collection, and includes standardized details such as the institution name, institution code, collection code, collection type, country, and available link out URL formula. When researchers … Continue reading BioCollections: Connecting Sequence Data to Physical Specimens →

11 August 2026

As shared in a previous National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Insights post, NCBI at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is making ongoing updates to several services to support implementation of the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy, which went into effect on July 1, 2025. As part of the effort, NCBI has been exploring alternative strategies … Continue reading Upcoming Transition of the Public Access Compliance Monitor (PACM) in Support of the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy →

27 July 2026

RefSeq release 236 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 July 6, 2026, this full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data containing:    629,953,391 records   482,864,455 proteins   83,806,434 RNAs   Sequences from 182,465 organisms   New eukaryotic … Continue reading Now Available: RefSeq Release 236 →

13 July 2026

Download release 20.0 of the NCBI protein profile Hidden Markov models (HMMs) used by the Prokaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline (PGAP). You can search this collection against your favorite prokaryotic proteins to identify their function using the HMMER sequence analysis package.    What’s new?    Release 20.0 contains:    18,950 HMMs maintained by NCBI    497 new HMMs since release 19.0    You can search and view the … Continue reading Now Available! NCBI Hidden Markov Models (HMM) Release 20.0 →

1 July 2026