The nucleotide sequence database created and maintained by the international collaboration of DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank is growing rapidly: the doubling time of the database has been steadily shortened and it is now only about a year. This fast growth of the database is largely attributable to the systematic genome projects, but the signicant contribution of an increasing number of individual researchers around the world should not be underestimated. To make the data submission of the latter category easier and simpler, therefore, it is important to develop an ecient logistics system which facilitates faster data ow from submitters to the user community. For this reason, we have developed a new data submission system based on the World Wide Web (WWW) and termed it SAKURA. The system has distinct advantages over the previous data submission by e-mail or oppy disk and the data acquisition process has become more reliable and ecient than before as described below.