This blog post is directed toward people who use dbSNP and dbVar, particularly those who submit non-human data to the two databases.
dbSNP and dbVar archive, process, display and report information related to germline and somatic variations from multiple species. These two databases have grown rapidly as sequencing and other discovery technologies have evolved, and now contain nearly two billion variants from over 360 species.
Based on projected growth and the resources required to archive and distribute the data, continued support for all organisms will become unsustainable for NCBI in the near future. Therefore, NCBI will phase out support for all non-human organisms in dbSNP and dbVar, and will support only human variation.
NCBI will phase out support for non-human organisms in dbSNP and dbVar following this timeline:
- September 1, 2017 – dbSNP and dbVar stop accepting non-human variant data submissions
- November 1, 2017 – dbSNP and dbVar interactive websites and related NCBI services stop presenting non-human variant data. The data will, however, continue to be available for download on the dbSNP and dbVar FTP sites.
Any non-human data that is already in the databases or that is submitted before September 1, 2017 will continue to be available via the dbSNP and dbVar FTP download sites.
If you want to submit non-human variation data now or after September 1, 2017, European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) – one of our partners in the International Nucleotide Sequence Database (INSDC) – is accepting these data in the European Variation Archive.
Finally, we would like to thank all the submitters and users who have supported dbSNP and dbVar throughout the years.