dbSNP and dbVar: NCBI Databases of Simple and Structural Variations

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) creates and maintains a set of databases that archive, process, display and report information related to germline and somatic variants from multiple species. These databases, primarily the Database of Short Genetic Variations (dbSNP) and the Database of Genomic Structural Variations (dbVar) represent over one billion variants from over 360 species, including many agriculturally important plants and animals.   The primary roles of both databases are to process submissions, archive the data, and distribute it for general use.  Each submission is assigned a database identifier (ss# in dbSNP or nsv#/esv# in dbVar) based either on flanking invariant sequence or locations asserted on reference sequences. These submissions are then processed to aggregate information from multiple submitters (assign rs# in dbSNP) and to calculate locations on NCBI Reference Sequences (RefSeqs) and integrate with other NCBI resources including Gene, PubMed, Nucleotide, Protein, and Genome.   dbSNP and dbVar data are made available in diverse ways: Entrez searches, study-specific reports, annotation on the genome, Sequence Viewer, and ftp downloads as BED, VCF, and other formats.  This presentation focuses on dbSNP and dbVar, summarizing current function and highlighting recent improvements.