The Global Biodata Coalition (GBC) recognises biodata resources that are of fundamental importance to the wider biological and life sciences community and to the long-term preservation of biological data. Through a restrictive selection process, the GBC selects databases that are considered authoritative in their field and are of high scientific quality. In its second round of selection, the GBC recently added 15 biodata resources to the 52 so-called Global Core Biodata Resources. Among these 15 resources are the two German databases SILVA and LPSN, both currently under development at the Leibniz Institute DSMZ. SILVA is a comprehensive resource for quality-controlled data sets of aligned ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequences from all domains of life and is used for the identification of microorganisms for example in clinical probes. The second database, The List of Prokaryotic Names with Standing in Nomenclature (LPSN) is the authoritative source of information on prokaryotic nomenclature and related data and serves scientists around the world to keep track of the ever-changing names of bacteria.
At the European level, the European Life Sciences Infrastructure (ELIXIR) established a similar system to the GBC many years ago and has recognised a small number of European databases with the ELIXIR Core Data Resource award. Recently, the Bacterial Diversity database (BacDive), the knowledge base on bacterial strains, has joined the circle of 31 ELIXIR Core Data Resources, the most important European databases in the life sciences. Including the BRENDA database, the largest database on enzymes also being developed at the DSMZ, the four databases are now recognised as global and European core data resources.
Currently, the team of bioinformaticians, software developers and biologists is being further expanded to build the new unified DSMZ Digital Diversity platform to develop new and to improve existing scientific web services for the advancement of the global scientific community.
