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Depositing Data in Repositories: BioProject

How to submit to BioProject

BioProject is an NCBI database for registering projects (defined as a collection of biological data related to a single initiative originating from a single organization or from a consortium) in NCBI repositories such as dbGaP, GEO, TSA, and SRA. As a result, BioProject submissions are created as a part of the submission process for another repository. Some repositories will automatically generate a BioProject entry as part of the process, while others will require you to create one manually. 

In general, think of a BioProject submission as describing the goal of the sequencing study. A similar and linked database, called BioSample, is used for describing the nature of the biological material that has been sequenced.

Submission steps

You will need an NCBI account 

  • Click on the link BioProject on the NCBI Submission Portal Home page or log in to BioProject directly here.
  • Click on the button New submission.
  • BioProject's browser-based wizard will help you to create your BioProject submission. You don't have to provide BioSample accession(s) or register your sample(s) within the BioProject submission wizard. The required components are as follows: 
    • Data Type
    • Sample scope
    • Organism (when scope is is monoisolate or multiisolate) or common taxonomic branch (when scope is multispecies and the species are fairly closely related).
      • Example: Enter "primates" if you are making a comparison of primates from different continents.
    • BioProject release date (Note: BioProjects are automatically released when public sequence data is linked to them).
  • After finalizing your submission by clicking the Submit button, view all your BioProject submissions and their status at

Image credit: NCBI

For most NCBI databases, you will not need to make a separate BioProject submission. SRA, GEO, and dbGaP all automatically generate or help you generate BioProject submissions when you deposit sequencing data, for instance. Do not register with the above steps unless you are in one of the following situations: 

  1. You are managing large and long-term projects where samples are collected over a course of year or more
  2. If an NCBI curator instructed you to register a separate BioProject or BioSamples
  3. If you are submitting an annotated genome before submitting the reads or the unannotated genome

Anatomy of a BioProject or BioSample entry

Image credit: NCBI