GenBank release 240.0 (10/28/2020) is now available on the NCBI FTP site. This release has 10.33 trillion bases and 2.17 billion records.
The current release has 219,055,207 traditional records containing 698,688,094,046 base pairs of sequence data. There are also 1,432,874,252 WGS records containing 9,215,815,569,509 base pairs of sequence data, 435,968,379 bulk-oriented TSA records containing 382,996,662,270 base pairs of sequence data, and 78,177,358 bulk-oriented TLS records containing 28,814,798,868 base pairs of sequence data.
Growth between releases
During the 71 days between the close dates for GenBank Releases 239.0 and 240.0, the ‘traditional’ portion of GenBank grew by 44,631,024,497 basepairs and by 412,969 sequence records. During that same period, 94,006 records were updated. An average of 7,140 ‘traditional’ records were added and/or updated per day.
Between releases 239.0 and 240.0, the WGS component of GenBank grew by 374,166,158,857 basepairs and by 24,751,365 sequence records. The TSA component of GenBank grew by 16,027,711,110 basepairs and by 18,443,812 sequence records. The TLS component of GenBank grew by 989,739,370 basepairs and by 2,495,201 sequence records.
The total number of sequence data files increased by 107 with this release. The divisions are as follows:
- BCT: 22 new files, now a total of 512
- CON: 1 new file, now a total of 218
- INV: 2 new files, now a total of 97
- PAT: 1 new file, now a total of 213
- PLN: 47 new files, now a total of 594
- PRI: 10 new files, now a total of 45
- ROD: 15 new files, now a total of 56
- VRL: 5 new files, now a total of 44
- VRT: 4 new files, now a total of 214
Delivery of GenBank 240.0 was delayed by two weeks
A power surge at the NCBI data center and subsequent downtime for a critical disk storage system led to a nearly two-week delay in the delivery of the data files for GenBank 240.0. There were no data losses, and public-facing systems remained available. However, between the direct impacts of the outage and subsequent efforts to resume processing pipelines, the GenBank release timeline was significantly pushed back. Our apologies for the delay!
Upcoming Changes
New /ncRNA_class value : circRNA
- The allowed values for the /ncRNA_class qualifier have been extended to include “circRNA”, for circular RNA molecules. This change will not appear until (or after) GenBank Release 242.0 in February 2021.
New /circular_RNA qualifier
- Complementing the new “circRNA” ncRNA class, a new qualifier will be introduced in (or after) GenBank Release 242.0 in February 2021.
Additional Information
For downloading purposes, please keep in mind that the uncompressed GenBank Release 240.0 sequence data flatfiles require roughly 1,524 GB. The ASN.1 data files require approximately 958 GB.
More information about GenBank release 240.0 is available in the release notes, as well as in the README files in the genbank and ASN.1 (ncbi-asn1) directories on FTP.