Bioinformation and DDBJ Center

The DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) was established in 1987. It collaborates with the NCBI in the United States and with ENA/EBI in Europe, and maintains the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) to provide a worldwide public asset for life sciences. Data on patent-related DNA and amino acid sequences are available through the cooperation of INSDC and patent offices in Japan, the United States, and Europe. We also cooperate with the Korean Bioinformation Center (KOBIC) to publish data from Korean patent offices.

Since 2009, the three parties (DDBJ, NCBI, and ENA) have cooperated to maintain the Sequence Read Archive for next-generation sequence data, BioProject for research projects, and BioSample for biological sources, materials and samples (Figure A). In 2013, DDBJ started the Japanese Genotype-phenotype Archive (JGA) in collaboration with the National Bioscience Database Center of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). We will continue to provide fundamental databases for life sciences.

Data submission to DDBJ is mainly from Japan; some come from other Asian and Middle-eastern countries. The number of submissions from these sources represents a little over 10% of all INSD submissions (Figure B). Internet access to DDBJ is obtained via domain names, e.g. 50% from ‘.com’ and ‘.net’ (from companies), 20% from ‘.jp’ (from Japan), and 7% from ‘.gov’ (from the US government). The remaining accesses are from anonymous sources or unknown addresses.

Our supercomputer platform is free for Japanese investigators. Each year, more than 600 registered users conduct life science research on our supercomputer system.