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Treat biological databases as infrastructure, not projects

By
  1. Neil Hall

    1. Earlham Institute and ELIXIR-UK, Norwich, UK.

  2. Katja Röper

    1. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

  3. Valerie Wood

    1. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

  4. Paul Nurse

    1. Royal Society, London, UK.

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Many modern biology studies rely on curated databases that scientists hardly notice until they are gone. PomBase, the knowledge hub for the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, has lost its long-term support from UK funder Wellcome. Another knowledge portal, FlyBase — for research on Drosophila fruit flies — lost funding for its curation team when awards from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) were cut in 2025. And after a funding gap, the human gene-nomenclature database HGNC secured one NIH award in 2024.

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Nature 656, 786 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02575-5

Updates & Corrections

  • Clarification 03 September 2026: This article has been amended to clarify the length of time that UK government funding has stagnated.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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