The European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) is a repository providing free and unrestricted access to annotated DNA and RNA sequences.

[2] The ENA is produced and maintained by the European Bioinformatics Institute and is a member of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) along with the DNA Data Bank of Japan and GenBank.

[6] In 1984, referring to the EMBL Data Library, Kneale and Kennard remarked that "it was clear some years ago that a large computerized database of sequences would be essential for research in Molecular Biology".

[13] The Trace Archive grew substantially with the commercialisation of high-throughput parallel sequencing technologies by companies such as Roche and Illumina.

[12][17] EMBL-Bank is contributed to by direct submission from genome consortia and smaller research groups as well as by the retrieval of sequence data associated with patent applications.

[25] The SRA operates under the guidance of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC)[23] and is the fastest-growing repository in the ENA.

[13] Additionally, sequence similarity-based searches implemented using De Bruijn graphs offer another method of retrieving records from the ENA.

[5] To manage this increase, the ENA selectively discards less-valuable sequencing platform data and implements advanced compression strategies.

[13] The emerging ELIXIR framework, coordinated by EBI director Janet Thornton, aims to secure a sustainable European funding infrastructure to support the continued availability of life science databases such as the ENA.