RefSeq prokaryotic genome data can be accessed in BLAST databases, web resources (Assembly, BioProject, Genome, Nucleotide and Protein), through NCBI's programming utilities, or can be downloaded from the genomes or refseq FTP sites. A custom ‘Microbes’ BLAST page, accessed from the BLAST home page, provides options to search against all RefSeq prokaryotic genomes, the Reference and Representative genomes subset, or to restrict the search to a specific taxa. A subset of prokaryotic genomes are annotated with a NCBI Gene ID and can be retrieved in NCBI's Gene resource or from the Gene FTP site. For archaea, this is provided for most complete genomes. For bacteria, this is provided for reference genomes and the representative genomes for species that have at least 10 genome submissions.
