The nucleotide sequence database collected and maintained by DDBJ is quarterly released on line to the public and distributed in the magnetic media. We completed DDBJ Release 33 in April 1998. DDBJ Release 33 consists of 2,174,769 entries, and the number of bases reached 1,479,303,279. Comparing to Release 29 that was released one year ago, the number of entries and bases increased by 71% and 82%, respectively.