Coming Soon: ClinVar Search Enhancements

As previously announced, NCBI is improving the ClinVar homepage to serve as a better introduction to data and services within the resource. We are also enhancing your search experience in ClinVar!

Search enhancements

We are introducing a multiple box search interface where you can enter one or more terms. Each box will be labeled for the type of term that can be entered there. For example, if you search by gene only, you will be able to enter one or more genes in the Gene search box. Each search box will have examples available to demonstrate how to format certain search terms. Continue reading “Coming Soon: ClinVar Search Enhancements” →

Improved Gene Data Access with Redesigned NCBI Gene Pages

We are excited to announce redesigned NCBI Gene pages! The redesigned pages (available through NCBI Datasets) offer a modern, clean interface with an intuitive layout that makes browsing and downloading NCBI Gene data easier. The legacy Gene page will continue to be available during this transition period, and we will continue to communicate updates and changes through NCBI websites and this blog.

What’s new?

Improved Search Capabilities: The new Gene landing page offers improved search functionality, allowing users to find gene information more effectively. Users can now search by taxon, locus tag and symbol (with or without specifying a taxon, and above species level) in addition to NCBI GeneID and accession.

Continue reading “Improved Gene Data Access with Redesigned NCBI Gene Pages” →

NCBI Website Maintenance — Beginning July 25th

On Friday, July 25th, starting at 9:00 PM EDT, we’ll be performing essential maintenance on the NLM data center. This upgrade is critical to ensure the continued reliability and stability of our services.

We anticipate this planned outage will last 24 hours or more. During this time, users may experience interrupted access or degraded performance across a range of NLM resources, including databases, search tools, submission systems, and programmatic services.

We understand this may cause inconvenience, and we sincerely apologize for the disruption. We’re committed to minimizing impact and will provide timely updates throughout the process.

We expect all NCBI products and services to be fully available again by Monday, July 28th.

Updates to Offerings in Support of the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has made initial updates to several offerings to support NIH-funded researchers and institutions to comply with the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy, which went into effect July 1, 2025. NCBI will continue to make ongoing improvements over the coming months.

What has been updated?

Continue reading “Updates to Offerings in Support of the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy” →

Compare Nucleotide Differences in the Multiple Comparative Genome Viewer (MCGV)!

NCBI’s new Multiple Comparative Genome Viewer (MCGV) is an interactive graphical genome browser that allows you to visualize multiple genome assemblies in a single view. MCGV displays whole genome alignments created by the research community.

What’s new?

We made several significant updates to this application since its initial release last winter! Now you can:

View gene annotation with exon and intron structure for all assemblies
Filter your view to only the assemblies and species you want to compare
Change the alignment dataset to view an 8-way ape alignment with the choice of multiple alternate anchor assemblies

Continue reading “Compare Nucleotide Differences in the Multiple Comparative Genome Viewer (MCGV)!” →

Genetic Testing Registry (GTR®) Search Improvements

We are excited to announce an improved search and navigation experience in the NIH Genetic Testing Registry (GTR®) so you can find the tests you need in a more intuitive and powerful way. Try searching GTR on our new Beta site and let us know how we can improve!

What’s new?

1. One search box for single or multiple terms

On the GTR homepage, there is now one search box where you can enter one or more terms like genes, diseases, and lab names. Start entering a term and select from the autosuggest menu, then enter another term. When you finish entering your query, hit the search button to see the results! On the GTR homepage, there is a separate search box for GeneReviews®. Continue reading “Genetic Testing Registry (GTR®) Search Improvements” →

GenBank Release 266.0 Now Available!

GenBank release 266.0 (4/25/2025) is now available on the NCBI FTP site. This release has 44.02 trillion bases and 5.68 billion records.

The current release has:

257,038,531 traditional records containing 5,794,509,308,815 base pairs of sequence data
4,234,652,334 WGS records containing 37,294,058,110,495 base pairs of sequence data
996,759,705 bulk-oriented TSA records containing 852,869,986,922 base pairs of sequence data
190,122,348 bulk-oriented TLS records containing 78,390,585,331 base pairs of sequence data

Continue reading “GenBank Release 266.0 Now Available!” →

NCBI ALFA Release 4 Now Available

Doubled cohort size to 409K

We are thrilled to announce the NCBI Allele Frequency Aggregator (ALFA) Release 4 (R4), a leap forward in providing comprehensive and robust allele frequency information to the global scientific community. ALFA R4 doubles the cohort size from R3! This expansion offers greater resolution for variant frequencies across diverse populations, improving the utility of ALFA for genetic research and clinical variant interpretation. Continue reading “NCBI ALFA Release 4 Now Available” →

Beta Now Live! New & Improved dbGaP Homepage Design

NCBI is excited to introduce a fresh look and feel to the Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP). Our beta homepage is now available and will become the default later in 2025. We encourage you to try it out and let us know what you think! This represents the first step of our ongoing modernization effort. The updated homepage will allow us to make continuous improvements to dbGaP based on your feedback.   Continue reading “Beta Now Live! New & Improved dbGaP Homepage Design” →

Now Available: Updated Bacterial and Archaeal Reference Genome Collection

Download the updated bacterial and archaeal reference Genome collection! We built this collection of 21,794 genomes by selecting the “best” genome assembly for each species among the 400,000+ prokaryotic genomes in RefSeq, which is 536 more than was included in the January release. Continue reading “Now Available: Updated Bacterial and Archaeal Reference Genome Collection” →