Expansion of the GenBank database

    GenBank made its first public release of nucleotide sequence data in December 1982 (Release 2), when it comprised 680,338 bases from 606 sequences. With a crude internet designed for the exchange of large data sets between academic institutions, and In the absence of ready access to personal computers, access was difficult, and it was often easier to transcribe sequence data directly from print. Release 54 (December 1987) was the first designed for use on PCs, and was provided as a large set of 5 1/4" floppy discs with 1.7 Mbp from 15,465 sequences. The release included a crude data retrieval system, geared towards human, mouse, and Drosophila sequences, all other species being lumped as "Other."

    The first DNA sequence data from Memorial University of Newfoundland were submitted in early 1991. Notable milestones are Release 120 (October 2000), which included more than one billion bases (>1 Gb), Release 170 (Feb 2009)  >100 Gb, and as of December 2023 > 1,000 Gb = 1 Terabases.