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

What you need to know for 2026 and beyond!  The volume of genomic sequencing data is growing rapidly, and we want to ensure that publicly shared datasets remain useful, findable, and scientifically trustworthy. To support this goal, the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) is implementing a set of data submission standards that improve data consistency, quality, and long-term value—benefiting both the … Continue reading Standards for Sequence Read Archive (SRA) Data Submission →

29 June 2026

BioProject and BioSample support the discovery, access, and reuse of nucleotide sequence data at NCBI. BioProject records provide a centralized place for accessing diverse data generated as part of a single research initiative. BioSample records describe the biological source materials used to generate those data. To ensure data quality, NCBI, in conjunction with the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), has established minimum criteria for submission acceptance. These changes are part of NCBI’s broader … Continue reading New Minimum Requirements for BioProject and BioSample Fields →

23 June 2026

High-quality submissions make genome data more valuable for the entire research community. To support data quality and usability, the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) has established minimum criteria for genome submission acceptance. Genome submissions to GenBank must meet the applicable INSDC minimum requirements to be processed, assigned accession numbers, and released publicly. These changes are part of NCBI’s broader effort to implement INSDC minimum specifications across sequence … Continue reading New Minimum Requirements for Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Genome Submissions →

18 June 2026

GenBank release 272.0 (6/12/2026) is now available on the NCBI FTP site. This release has 57.69 trillion bases and 6.52 billion records.  The current release has:   261,460,182 traditional records containing 7,289,942,983,522 base pairs of sequence data 4,756,526,485 WGS records containing 45,628,511,953,497 base pairs of sequence data 1,058,643,373 bulk-oriented TSA records containing 898,651,493,967 base pairs of … Continue reading GenBank Release 272.0 is Available! →

16 June 2026

As previously announced, major changes are being made to enhance your GenBank submission experience. As of April 2026, you can submit to GenBank using our new simplified wizards in Submission Portal-GenBank.  What now?  Use Submission Portal-GenBank for all GenBank sequence submissions, except for sequence alignments  Use BankIt only if you are submitting aligned sequences for feature propagation  What’s next?  Later in 2026, all GenBank submissions, including … Continue reading BankIt Submitters: GenBank Submission Update →

26 May 2026

RefSeq release 235 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 May 11, 2026, this full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data containing:    616,942,961 records   473,570,633 proteins   81,124,747 RNAs   Sequences from 180,620 organisms   New eukaryotic … Continue reading Now Available: RefSeq Release 235 →

21 May 2026

Sequence data from the recent Andes hantavirus outbreak are now available through NLM’s NCBI resources, NCBI Virus web interface and NCBI Datasets command-line tool. These data were submitted by the University Hospitals of Geneva.  Access through NCBI Virus  To find sequence records from 2026, search for “Orthohantavirus andesense” in NCBI Virus and apply the “Collection Date” filter. To get a quick overview … Continue reading New Data Available! Access Hantavirus Sequences at NCBI →

20 May 2026