Question

Describe, in detail, a research question you could address using GenBank. Explain exactly how you would use GenBank to answer your question. If you would need information beyond what is in GenBank, explain what information. If not, explain why not

Answer 1

The GenBank database is designed to provide and encourage access within the scientific community to the most up to data that contains publicly available nucleotide sequences for 400 000 formally described species DNA sequence information. It is an open access and has no restrictions on the use or distribution of the GenBank data.

GenBank is accessible through the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Entrez retrieval system, which integrates data from the major DNA and protein sequence databases along with taxonomy, genome, mapping, protein structure and domain information, and the biomedical journal literature via PubMed. BLAST provides sequence similarity searches of GenBank and other sequence databases.

Information of sequenced protein(s),is beyond Genbank. GenBank only has nucleotide sequence data. But to submit directly sequenced protein to a public database, The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) is used. The mission of UniProt is to provide the scientific community with a comprehensive, high-quality and freely accessible resource of protein sequence and functional information.

GenBank also does not accept primer sequences, but primers can be submitted to NCBI’s Probe database.