List of biological databases

Biological databases are stores of biological information. The journal Nucleic Acids Research regularly publishes special issues on biological databases and has a list of such databases. The 2018 issue has a list of about 180 such databases and updates to previously described databases. Omics Discovery Index can be used to browse and search several biological databases. Furthermore, the NIAID Data Ecosystem Discovery Portal developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) enables searching across databases.

Meta databases
Meta databases are databases of databases that collect data about data to generate new data. They are capable of merging information from different sources and making it available in a new and more convenient form, or with an emphasis on a particular disease or organism. Originally, metadata was only a common term referring simply to data about data  such as tags, keywords, and markup headers.
 * ConsensusPathDB: a molecular functional interaction database, integrating information from 12 others
 * Entrez (National Center for Biotechnology Information)
 * Neuroscience Information Framework (University of California, San Diego): integrates hundreds of neuroscience relevant resources; many are listed below

Model organism databases
Model organism databases provide in-depth biological data for intensively studied organisms.
 * PomBase: the knowledgebase for the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe
 * SubtiWiki: integrated database for the model bacterium Bacillus subtilis
 * TAIR: the knowledgebase for the plant Arabidopsis thaliana

DNA databases
The primary databases make up the International Nucleotide Sequence Database (INSD). The include:
 * DNA Data Bank of Japan (National Institute of Genetics)
 * EMBL (European Bioinformatics Institute)
 * GenBank (National Center for Biotechnology Information)

DDBJ (Japan), GenBank (USA) and European Nucleotide Archive (Europe) are repositories for nucleotide sequence data from all organisms. All three accept nucleotide sequence submissions, and then exchange new and updated data on a daily basis to achieve optimal synchronisation between them. These three databases are primary databases, as they house original sequence data. They collaborate with Sequence Read Archive (SRA), which archives raw reads from high-throughput sequencing instruments.

Secondary databases are:
 * 23andMe's database
 * HapMap
 * OMIM (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man): inherited diseases
 * RefSeq
 * 1000 Genomes Project: launched in January 2008. The genomes of more than a thousand anonymous participants from a number of different ethnic groups were analyzed and made publicly available.
 * EggNOG Database: a hierarchical, functionally and phylogenetically annotated orthology resource based on 5090 organisms and 2502 viruses. It provides multiple sequence alignments and maximum-likelihood trees, as well as broad functional annotation.

Other databases
 * Nucleosome positioning region database

Gene expression databases
Generic gene expression databases

Microarray gene expression databases

Genome databases
These databases collect genome sequences, annotate and analyze them, and provide public access. Some add curation of experimental literature to improve computed annotations. These databases may hold many species genomes, or a single model organism genome. • ArrayExpress: archive of functional genomics data; stores data from high-throughput functional genomics experiments from EMBL

• Bioinformatic Harvester

• Cervical cancer gene database

• Ensembl: provides automatic annotation databases for human, mouse, other vertebrate and eukaryote genomes

• Ensembl Genomes: provides genome-scale data for bacteria, protists, fungi, plants and invertebrate metazoa, through a unified set of interactive and programmatic interfaces (using the Ensembl software platform)

• FlyBase: genome of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster

• Gene Disease Database

• Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO ): a public functional genomics data repository from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), which supports array- and sequence-based data. Tools for querying and downloading gene expression profiles are provided.

• Human Protein Atlas (HPA ): a public database with expression profiles of human protein coding genes both on mRNA and protein level in tissues, cells, subcellular compartments, and cancer tumors.

• Legume Information System (LIS): genomic database for the legume family

• Personal Genome Project: human genomes of 100,000 volunteers from around the world

• RGD (Rat Genome Database): genomic and phenotype data for Rattus norvegicus

• Saccharomyces Genome Database: genome of the yeast model organism

• SNPedia

• SoyBase Database (SoyBase): USDA soybean genetics and genomic database (Soybean)

• UCSC Malaria Genome Browser: genome of malaria causing species (Plasmodium falciparum and others)

• Wormbase: genome of the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans and WormBase ParaSite for parasitic species

• Xenbase: genome of the model organism Xenopus tropicalis and Xenopus laevis

• Zebrafish Information Network: genome of this fish model organism

Phenotype databases

 * PHI-base: pathogen-host interaction database. It links gene information to phenotypic information from microbial pathogens on their hosts. Information is manually curated from peer-reviewed literature.
 * RGD Rat Genome Database: genomic and phenotype data for Rattus norvegicus
 * PomBase database: manually curated phenotypic data for the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe

RNA databases

 * miRBase: the microRNA database
 * PolymiRTS: a database of DNA variations in putative microRNA target sites
 * PolyQ: database of polyglutamine repeats in disease and non-disease associated proteins
 * Rfam: a database of RNA families
 * IRESbase: A comprehensive database of experimentally validated internal ribosome entry sites.

Amino acid / protein databases
(See also: List of proteins in the human body)

Several publicly available data repositories and resources have been developed to support and manage protein related information, biological knowledge discovery and data-driven hypothesis generation. The databases in the table below are selected from the databases listed in the Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) databases issues and database collection and the databases cross-referenced in the UniProtKB. Most of these databases are cross-referenced with UniProt / UniProtKB so that identifiers can be mapped to each other.

Proteins in human:

There are about ~20,000 protein coding genes in the standard human genome. (Roughly ~1200 already have Wikipedia articles - the Gene Wiki - about them) if we are Including splice variants, there could be as many as 500,000 unique human proteins

Signal transduction pathway databases

 * NCI-Nature Pathway Interaction Database
 * Netpath: curated resource of signal transduction pathways in humans
 * Reactome: navigable map of human biological pathways, ranging from metabolic processes to hormonal signalling (Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, European Bioinformatics Institute, NYU Langone Medical Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
 * WikiPathways

Metabolic pathway and protein function databases
• BioCyc Database Collection: includes EcoCyc and MetaCyc

• BRENDA: the comprehensive enzyme information system, including FRENDA, AMENDA, DRENDA, and KENDA

• HMDB: contains detailed information about small molecule metabolites found in the human body

• KEGG PATHWAY Database (Univ. of Kyoto)

• MANET database (University of Illinois)

• Reactome: navigable map of human biological pathways, ranging from metabolic processes to hormonal signalling (Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, European Bioinformatics Institute, NYU Langone Medical Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)

• SABIO-RK: database for biochemical reactions and their kinetic properties

• WikiPathways

Taxonomic databases
Numerous databases collect information about species and other taxonomic categories. The Catalogue of Life is a special case as it is a meta-database of about 150 specialized "global species databases" (GSDs) that have collected the names and other information on (almost) all described and thus "known" species.
 * BacDive: bacterial metadatabase that provides strain-linked information about bacterial and archaeal biodiversity, including taxonomy information
 * Catalogue of Life: a meta-database of all species on earth
 * EzTaxon-e: database for the identification of prokaryotes based on 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences
 * NCBI Taxonomy: a taxonomic database operated by NCBI and concentrating on all taxa for which DNA sequences are available (those sequences are stored by GenBank, another database operated by NCBI).

Image databases
Images play a critical role in biomedicine, ranging from images of anthropological specimens to zoology. However, there are relatively few databases dedicated to image collection, although some projects such as iNaturalist collect photos as a main part of their data. A special case of "images" are 3-dimensional images such as protein structures or 3D-reconstructions of anatomical structures. Image databases include, among others:
 * Allen Brain Atlas
 * Digital Brain Bank
 * Electron Microscopy Public Image Archive (EMPIAR)
 * Image Data Resource
 * Morphobank
 * Morphosource

Radiologic databases

 * The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA)
 * Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse

Exosomal databases

 * ExoCarta
 * Extracellular RNA Atlas: a repository of small RNA-seq and qPCR-derived exRNA profiles from human and mouse biofluids

Mathematical model databases

 * Biomodels Database: published mathematical models describing biological processes

Databases on antimicrobial resistance rates and antibiotic consumption

 * CIPARS
 * EARS-Net
 * ESAC-Net

Databases on antimicrobial resistance mechanisms
• AMRFinderPlus

• Antimicrobial Drug Database (AMDD)

• ARDB (no longer maintained)

• ARGminer

• BacMet

• Beta-Lactamase Database (BLAD)

• CBMAR

• The Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database

• FARME

• INTEGRALL

• LacED

• MEGARes

• MUBII-TB-DB

• Mustard Database

• MvirDB

• PathoPhenoDB

• PATRIC database

• RAC: Repository of Antibiotic resistance Cassettes

• ResFinder

• TBDReaMDB

• u-CARE

• VFDB

Wiki-style databases

 * Gene Wiki
 * WikiProfessional

Specialized databases
• Barcode of Life Data Systems: database of DNA barcodes

• Bacterial Pesticidal Protein Database

• The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA): provides data from hundreds of cancer samples obtained using high-throughput techniques such as gene expression profiling, copy number variation profiling, SNP genotyping, genome-wide DNA methylation profiling, microRNA profiling, and exon sequencing of at least 1,200 genes

• Cellosaurus: a knowledge resource on cell lines

• CTD (Comparative Toxicogenomics Database): describes chemical-gene-disease interactions

• DiProDB: a database to collect and analyse thermodynamic, structural and other dinucleotide properties

•  Housekeeping and Reference Transcript Atlas (HRT Atlas) web-based tool for searching cell specific candidate reference genes/transcripts suitable for qPCR experiment normalization. HRT Atlas also describes a complete list of human and mouse housekeeping genes and transcripts

• Dryad: repository of data underlying scientific publications in the basic and applied biosciences

• Edinburgh Mouse Atlas

• EPD Eukaryotic Promoter Database

• FINDbase (the Frequency of INherited Disorders database)

• GigaDB: repository of large scale datasets underlying scientific publications in the biological and biomedical research

• HGNC (HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee): a resource for approved human gene nomenclature

• International Human Epigenome Consortium: integrates epigenomic reference data from well-known national endeavors such as the Canadian CEEHRC, European Blueprint, European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA ), US ENCODE and NIH Roadmap, German DEEP, Japanese CREST, Korean KNIH, Singapore's GIS and China's EpiHK

• MethBase: database of DNA methylation data visualized on the UCSC Genome Browser

• Minimotif Miner: database of short contiguous functional peptide motifs

• Oncogenomic databases: a compilation of databases that serve for cancer research

• PubMed: references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics

• RIKEN integrated database of mammals

• TDR Targets: a chemogenomics database focused on drug discovery in tropical diseases

• TRANSFAC: a database about eukaryotic transcription factors, their genomic binding sites and DNA-binding profiles

• JASPAR: a database of manually curated, non-redundant transcription factor binding profiles.

• MetOSite: a database about methionine sulfoxidation sites and its functional roles in proteins

• Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) is the largest collection of hospital care data in the United States. It includes hundreds of millions of inpatient, outpatient, and emergency records.

• LEXAS curates descriptions of biological experiments from PMC articles.

• Bovine Metabolome Database is a free web database that lists known bovine metabolites