[Single nucleotide polymorphisms(SNPs)and SNP databases].

Abstract

Along the rapid development of human genome sequencing project, the variation data of human DNA sequence has become more and more useful not only for studying the origin, evolution and the mechanisms of maintenance of genetic variability in human populations, but also for detection of genetic association in complex disease such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension, Alzheimer's disease, etc. In recent two years, the databases such as dbSNP, CGAP, HGBASE, JST and Go!Poly etc. to collect and exploit data of genomic polymorphisms mainly single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been respectively established in the United States, European countries, Japan and China. This overview summarized the development and applications of those SNP databases and also discussed some issues regarding the potential improvement of accuracy of SNP data collected. China has one fifth population in the world. Therefore, development of the SNP database for Chinese populations is of importance in developing complete SNP databases of human genome and may also stimulate the further development of biomedical research and production in China.