In 1982, the first major DNA sequence databases were established in the U.S. (GenBank) and Germany. GenBank ^® is the NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences.

GenBank is part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, which comprises the DNA DataBank of Japan (DDBJ), the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), and GenBank at NCBI. These three organizations exchange data on a daily basis.