Introducing the dbGaP Study Registration System

NCBI, part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), is excited to launch a new Registration System (RS) to manage study registrations in the Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP). The new RS complies with current policy and security requirements and is now available for use! We encourage you to login to the new system and share feedback as we make ongoing improvements.

dbGaP login is now centralized using Research Auth Services (RAS), in compliance with the security and data access updates for NIH Controlled-access data repositories (CADRs) and Approved Users (Guide Notice NOT-OD-25-159). An overview of the login related updates can be found here. Continue reading “Introducing the dbGaP Study Registration System” →

Meet with NCBI’s MGV Team at Upcoming Conferences

NCBI’s Medical Genetics and Human Variation (MGV) program provides various resources used by clinicians, healthcare professionals, researchers, students, educators, and bioinformaticians. These include ClinVar, NIH Genetic Testing Registry (GTR®), MedGen, Medical Genetics Summaries (MGS), dbSNP, Allele Frequency Aggregator (ALFA), dbVar, dbGaP, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Application Programming Interface (API), and Data Repository Service (DRS). Together, these resources facilitate building clinical diagnosis and care and the analysis of research study data to determine causal genetic relationships in humans.

November conferences

MGV experts will attend the following conferences in November 2026. Stop by to meet the team, learn how MGV resources can support your work, and share feedback on NCBI resources. To schedule a meeting, please email the contacts listed below and include your contact information:

Continue reading “Meet with NCBI’s MGV Team at Upcoming Conferences” →

Now Available: GenBank Release 274.0

GenBank release 274.0 (10/15/2026) is now available on the NCBI FTP site. This release has 60.07 trillion bases and 6.68 billion records.

The current release has:

269,895,537 traditional records containing 9,384,961,284,424 base pairs of sequence data
5,440,961,876 WGS records containing 54,988,213,343,520 base pairs of sequence data
1,087,551,042 bulk-oriented TSA records containing 929,599,978,566 base pairs of sequence data
207,550,042 bulk-oriented TLS records containing 86,124,265,240 base pairs of sequence data

Continue reading “Now Available: GenBank Release 274.0” →

Introducing NCBI RNA-Seq Gene Feature Counts

Freely Accessible on AWS Registry of Open Data

We are excited to launch a transformative resource for the genomics community: RNA-Seq Gene Feature Counts for all public human and mouse Sequence Read Archive (SRA) data. This data is now freely accessible via Amazon Web Services Registry of Open Data (AWS RODA) as part of the AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program (AWS ODP).

Why this matters

The SRA is one of the world’s largest open access repositories of sequencing data. Utilizing this wealth of information can be difficult and time consuming, particularly when working at-scale. To overcome this hurdle, SRA has introduced several data derivatives that make it possible to analyze millions of sequencing runs with ease. The latest of these is a set of human and mouse RNA-Seq Gene Feature Counts that allow researchers to:

- Easily analyze millions of SRA runs without downloading the large original files
- Reduce data processing times and costs
- Prescreen runs prior to selecting a subset for subsequent analysis

Continue reading “Introducing NCBI RNA-Seq Gene Feature Counts” →

A New Way to Explore Connections in Biomedical Literature

We’re excited to announce the launch of Linked Discoveries™, a new experimental pilot resource developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) that helps researchers, clinicians, information specialists, and the public discover meaningful connections between related scientific publications. Starting from a PubMed® citation, Linked Discoveries maps up to 200 of the closest related articles so you can quickly explore relationships and shared topics between articles, including conditions, genes, and chemicals of interest.

How This Helps You

Every day, researchers face an ever-growing volume of biomedical literature. Finding the right papers isn’t just about matching keywords — it’s about understanding how ideas connect, how findings build on one another, and how research evolves as new evidence emerges. Linked Discoveries was designed to support that kind of exploration: helping users navigate the literature, synthesize what’s known, and evaluate the strength of the evidence behind a finding. Continue reading “A New Way to Explore Connections in Biomedical Literature” →

dbGaP Modernization Update

NCBI is modernizing the database of Genotype and Phenotype (dbGaP), a repository that collects human research study data from NIH-funded investigators and facilitates controlled-access to individual-level data. As previously announced, we released a modernized homepage in 2025. Now, we’ve extended that modernization to the public search and study record pages.

What’s new?

The modernized public study record pages provide a summary of each study that has been registered in dbGaP (see an example in the image below). Use these pages to understand the research design, affiliations and references, associated files and file access, and other metadata for a study. These record pages can help you understand if the individual-level data for a study will be helpful for your research before you initiate a request for access to the controlled data. Continue reading “dbGaP Modernization Update” →

Discover the Enhanced SRA Run Browser User Interface

If you use NCBI’s Sequence Read Archive’s (SRA) Run Browser, you will be excited to explore the updated user interface (UI). The latest enhancements are designed to make your data exploration smoother, more intuitive, and more informative than ever before. Let’s dive into what’s new and how these features can help you get the most out of your STAT (SRA Taxonomy Analysis Tool) output.

Expanded taxonomy tree for deeper insights

The highlight of the new Run Browser UI is the expanded taxonomy tree with additional metadata and easy-to-use expand and collapse buttons. This interactive feature allows you to drill down into taxonomic hierarchies, revealing the taxonomic tree of an SRA Run with just a click. With expandable taxonomic levels and additional metadata, the taxonomy tree makes it easier to navigate and interpret the taxa detected in the Run. Continue reading “Discover the Enhanced SRA Run Browser User Interface” →

Now Available: RefSeq Release 237

RefSeq release 237 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 August 31, 2026, this full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data containing:

645,505,406 records 
495,290,394 proteins 
86,067,871 RNAs 
Sequences from 184,752 organisms

Continue reading “Now Available: RefSeq Release 237” →

Register for NCBI’s Pre-Conference Workshop at ASM BIG 2026

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 Data, will showcase a suite of services designed specifically for researchers working with pathogenic bacteria. Whether you are new to genomic data analysis or an experienced scientist looking for advanced analysis tools, this hands-on workshop will introduce NCBI resources and workflows for working with pathogenic bacterial data.

Workshop goals

Gain practical skills for searching, retrieving, and analyzing genomic and metagenomic datasets with powerful NCBI resources like Datasets, Sequence Read Archive (SRA), and Pathogen Detection
Participate in hands-on exercises using SRA Toolkit, STAT, HRRT and cutting-edge technologies for outbreak investigation and antimicrobial resistance research
Network with fellow scientists and NCBI experts to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving field

Continue reading “Register for NCBI’s Pre-Conference Workshop at ASM BIG 2026” →

Interactive Annotation for Viruses Using VADR

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 processing is complete.

What is Web VADR?

With just a few clicks in Web VADR you can:

Annotate genes, proteins, and other key features on one or more virus nucleotide sequences
Quickly identify potential issues in input sequences
Review results based on curated reference models
Download an annotation file (feature file) formatted and ready to use in submissions to GenBank
Download accession lists indicating passing and failing sequences, and other files useful for reviewing your results

Continue reading “Interactive Annotation for Viruses Using VADR” →