The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Taxonomy includes organism names and classifications for every sequence in the nucleotide and protein sequence databases of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC). It provides a framework for clustering elements within other domains of NCBI web pages, for internal linking between domains of the Entrez system and for linking out to taxon-specific external resources on the web and relevant publications. It is also the standard nomenclature and classification repository for the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) that comprises of GenBank, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ). It consists of a curated set of names and classifications for all of the source organisms represented in the INSDC.
The NCBI taxonomy database contains a list of names that are determined to be nomenclaturally correct or valid (as defined according to the different codes of nomenclature), classified in an approximately phylogenetic hierarchy (depending on the level of knowledge regarding phylogenetic relationships of a given group) as well as a number of names that exist outside the jurisdiction of the codes. That is, it focuses on nomenclature and systematics, rather than documenting the description of taxa. It requires a curator to select a current name out of all possible names for a specific taxon. This is done by a specialist at the NCBI Taxonomy database, relying on published taxonomic data and external expert opinion. This single, current name are indicated on all INSDC records.
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