Data arrive at ENA from a variety of sources. These include submissions of raw data, assembled sequences and annotation from small-scale sequencing efforts, data provision from the major European sequencing centres and routine and comprehensive exchange with our partners in the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC).
Provision of nucleotide sequence data to ENA or its INSDC partners has become a central and mandatory step in the dissemination of research findings to the scientific community. ENA works with publishers of scientific literature and funding bodies to ensure compliance with these principles and to provide optimal submission systems and data access tools that work seamlessly with the published literature.
ENA is made up of a number of distinct classes of data organised into three tiers. Each class has its own data formats and standards. ENA data classes and formats are described here.