Media type: E-Article Title: The Importance of Biological Databases in Biological Discovery Contributor: Baxevanis, Andreas D. Published: Wiley, 2011 Published in: Current Protocols in Bioinformatics, 34 (2011) 1 Language: English DOI: 10.1002/0471250953.bi0101s34 ISSN: 1934-3396; 1934-340X Origination: Footnote: Description: AbstractBiological databases play a central role in bioinformatics. They offer scientists the opportunity to access a wide variety of biologically relevant data, including the genomic sequences of an increasingly broad range of organisms. This unit provides a brief overview of major sequence databases and portals, such as GenBank, the UCSC Genome Browser, and Ensembl. Model organism databases, including WormBase, the Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR), and those made available through the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) resource are also covered. Non‐sequence‐centric databases, such as Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), the Protein Data Bank (PDB), MetaCyc, and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) are also discussed. Curr. Protoc. Bioinform. 34:1.1.1‐1.1.6. © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.