Figure 1.

Sequence database submissions from 1982 to 2010. Nucleotides submitted to the classical version of GenBank (diamonds, thin line) and to the Sequence Read Archive (circles, thick line) are shown as a function of time. Data for GenBank up to 2008 were obtained from the NCBI website [68] and subsequent years were obtained from GenBank publications [69,70]. Data for SRA was obtained from publications for 2008 to 2010 [71-73] and estimated for 2007 on the basis of 44 projects being in the database at the end of the year [74] and using February 2008 data from NCBI [75] to estimate the approximate number of bases likely to have been submitted from that spectrum of projects. Key advances in sequencing technology are shown with arrows. The development of second generation sequencing technologies and single-molecule sequencing has had a dramatic increase in the number of sequences deposited in public databases. Less than a year after its initiation, the SRA had already surpassed classical GenBank and it now accounts for over 95% of all new sequence deposits.