About Release 36.0 and 37.0: a new system of "Nucleotide Sequence ID" and "Protein ID"

DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank have agreed to introduce a new system of identifiers for both nucleotide and protein sequences. The form of "Nucleotide Sequence ID" is 'Accession No. + Version No' (e.g., AB123456.1), "Protein ID" is 'CDS ID + Version No.'.

The accession portion of these identifiers is stable and will not change, but the version portion will be incremented whenever the underlying sequence changes. DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank plan to synchronize their release-processing schedules so that a common close-of-data occurs on March 20, 1999. In DDBJ's case, we will advance date of close-of-data for Release 36.0 and 37.0, and put this system into operation from Release 37.0. Next release (Release 36.0) will be released at the
begeinning of January and Release 37.0 will be released in March.