1.O Current contents
Release 31.1 of OWL contains 279,796 entries. The relatively small size
of the database, compared with the sum of the entries in its primary
sources, reflects the strict nature of the redundancy criteria used
in its construction: all identical and trivially-different sequences
(i.e. those having a single amino acid change) are removed.
SWISS-PROT is currently the highest priority source, and all others
are compared against it. The sudden drop in contribution from NRL-3D
marks the point at which we included this source in the redundancy
comparison (this was necessary as NRL_3D was growing rapidly and
was thus fast compromising the non-redundant status of OWL).
OWL is released in major and minor versions: minor releases reflect
updates of the lower priority sources; major releases denote updates
of SWISS-PROT. A major or minor version of OWL is release every 6-8
weeks. The length of time between releases is a function of the
method used to index the database: the indices generated are large,
but the payoff is achieved with the high speed of database queries.
2.0 Database growth
The database is growing with a doubling rate of around 18 months. The
growth since 1988 is summarised below:
SWISS-PROT PIR-1 PIR-2 PIR-3 PIR-4 GENBANK NRL-3D TOTAL OWL
ENTRIES ENTRIES ENTRIES ENTRIES ENTRIES ENTRIES ENTRIES ENTRIES
1444 5251 1290 0 0 2183 0 10777
1922 5407 1805 0 0 3768 0 14076
2705 5407 1301 0 0 3893 0 14135
3487 5556 1231 0 0 4354 0 15414
3423 5722 1699 0 0 4292 0 15956
4472 5980 1547 0 0 4799 0 17631
4471 5980 1538 0 0 4621 0 17425
5096 6158 1709 0 0 5471 0 19233
6409 6329 1576 0 0 5753 0 20874
6275 6549 1806 0 0 6538 0 21966
7737 6549 1651 0 0 5820 449 22997
9073 6809 2087 0 0 6086 232 25049
10365 7082 2868 2718 0 5746 436 29975
10365 7082 2868 2718 0 5746 913 30452
11265 7744 2663 2316 0 9325 902 35002
20766 575 2237 2299 0 9704 954 37319
20766 575 2237 2299 0 6525 954 34137
21795 636 3185 4386 0 6103 1009 37116
21795 689 3486 5405 0 6673 1036 39084
22654 652 3428 4967 0 7830 1036 40567
22654 742 3743 5869 0 7289 1191 41488
23742 664 3631 5418 0 8378 1191 43024
23742 803 4289 7516 0 7058 1294 44702
25044 765 4003 7056 0 8983 1294 47145
25044 942 4660 7688 0 8200 1352 47886
26706 734 4532 7041 0 9824 1379 50216
26706 911 5297 7909 0 8812 1457 51092
26706 911 5297 7909 0 9155 1457 51435
28154 743 5098 7494 0 10975 1550 54014
28154 883 5521 8744 0 11956 1550 56808
29954 131 8213 6636 0 12137 1630 58701
29954 131 8213 6636 0 14661 1630 61225
31807 104 9257 7713 0 12404 1703 62988
31807 104 9257 7713 0 15310 1703 65894
31807 104 9257 7713 0 18245 1686 68812
33328 93 10504 8712 0 15655 1686 69978
33328 93 10504 8712 0 17694 1686 72017
35999 127 10528 9692 0 17661 2722 76729
35999 261 11499 10424 0 19401 2722 80306
35999 261 11499 10424 0 22768 2722 83672
40290 117 12643 11260 0 27896 4153 96359
40290 131 15688 9888 0 30258 4656 100911
43469 140 19840 5669 0 31803 5069 105990
43465 171 21427 7010 0 49231 535 121842
43464 182 25919 5346 0 53198 610 128719
49355 164 22737 4928 0 58292 602 136058
49335 188 26533 3061 33 62985 602 142737
52200 193 26343 2956 46 64824 603 147165
52199 213 27729 3331 51 70420 597 154540
52199 213 27729 3331 51 76515 597 160635
52199 245 32535 3414 108 76587 600 165688
59017 222 29802 3177 107 72200 603 165128
59017 222 29802 3177 107 84693 595 177613
59017 267 30048 4080 122 91242 595 185371
59017 289 32175 3604 153 95675 596 191509
59017 312 36916 2002 155 99031 1039 198742
59017 379 41408 851 169 115274 1099 218197
69110 369 43213 484 168 126158 1134 240636
69110 393 45067 357 164 134190 1233 250514
74015 453 52565 270 200 150959 1334 279796
Contact us: or, for more info, visit Bioinformatics at Manchester, Faculty of Life Sciences, School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester.