<p>This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p> <p>SNP data has grown exponentially over the last two years, SNP database evolution has
matched this growth, as initial development of several independent SNP databases has
given way to one central SNP database, dbSNP. Other SNP databases have instead
evolved to complement this central database by providing gene specific focus and an
increased level of curation and analysis on subsets of data, derived from the central data
set. By contrast, human mutation data, which has been collected over many years, is still
stored in disparate sources, although moves are afoot to move to a similar central
database. These developments are timely, human mutation and polymorphism data both
hold complementary keys to a better understanding of how genes function and malfunction
in disease. The impending availability of a complete human genome presents us with an
ideal framework to integrate both these forms of data, as our understanding of the
mechanisms of disease increase, the full genomic context of variation may become
increasingly significant.</p>
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Comp Funct Genomics. 2002 Feb; 3(1):67-74