With the 2025 release, BacDive has reached a special milestone: the database now contains information on more than 100,000 strains.
When BacDive was first published, in 2012, the database covered 17,335 strains from the bacterial collection of the Leibniz Institute DSMZ with information on their taxonomy, morphology, physiology, and sampling originating from internal files of the collection.
Since then, new strains and information have been added year after year, not only from the DSMZ, but also from other trusted sources. These include primary literature, especially descriptions of new species, internal files of other culture collections like the Culture Collection at the University of Gothenburg (CCUG) and the Culture Collection of the Institut Pasteur (CIP), private strain collections, other databases, and more.
For the latest update, new strain data provided by DSMZ and information on type strains of newly described species from the LPSN database were added. This update brought the current count of strains described in BacDive to 100,866*.
| BacDive Section | Release 2023 | Release 2024 | Release 2025 | 2024-2025 increase |
| Name and taxonomic classification* | 154,525 | 157,897 | 160,171 | 1% |
| Morphology* | 74,683 | 75,055 | 87,870 | 15% |
| Culture and growth conditions* | 193,351 | 197,164 | 199,888 | 1% |
| Physiology and metabolism* | 1,691,087 | 1,707,453 | 1,721,500 | 1% |
| Isolation, sampling and environmental information* | 187,071 | 188,415 | 189,182 | 0% |
| Application and interaction* | 36,338 | 37,157 | 37,446 | 1% |
| Sequence data* | 109,572 | 115,618 | 96,371 | -20% |
| References* | 109,572 | 115,618 | 96,371 | -20% |
| References* | 229,361 | 230,757 | 612,215 | 62% |
| overall entries* | 2,675,988 | 2,709,516 | 3.104.643 | 13% |
With this update, BacDive additionally receives a new look. The new website, which had been in beta test phase for the last six months, adopts the shared modern design of DSMZ Digital Diversity, which offers users an intuitive navigation and more clearly structured strain detail pages.
BacDive is also taking a long-awaited leap into the world of genomics with the debut of a genome browser. As a database for phenotypic and isolation source data, BacDive has previously merely displayed sequence accession numbers and links to sequence databases. For the first time, BacDive now displays genomic information. The genome browser feature lists and visualizes Bakta annotations of INSDC genome assemblies. Users are able to navigate through the annotated genome, search through gene features, and view information on them.
*Please note that this content update is not yet available through the API. Due to some structural updates in the data, it was decided to withhold the update at this time. API users will be informed in January 2026 about the timing of the API update and any changes to the JSON structure which may affect workflows and scripts.
BacDive is moving closer together with the DSMZ Digital Diversity, now also in its look.
We are excited to introduce the new BacDive design and invite you to try it out and look forward to your feedback. You can find the website directly at https://beta.bacdive.dsmz.de or by clicking the red “New Design” button on every BacDive page.
New genome-based predictions for 15,987 strains generated using a GenomeNet model trained with the deepG package in R were recently added to BacDive. 33,913 predictions for Gram stain behavior, motility, oxygen tolerance and spore formation with confidence values of at least 90% could be fully integrated into the strain data and can now be seen in the respective sections marked with the icon.
BacDive's new Special Collections assemble strains that are part of the same research project or collection. This provides users with better access and makes these data sets more visible. You can find all Special Collections on a dedicated new page at https://bacdive.dsmz.de/special-collections. Have fun exploring!
We are also very happy to present the new BacDive knowledge graph, which contains more than 16.5 million triples representing so far 26 of the most important BacDive entities. It can be accessed through a SPARQL endpoint (https://sparql.dsmz.de/bacdive) that enables direct and standardized searches of BacDive data and also allows for federated queries spanning multiple data sources.
We are happy to announce that the traditional Christmas BacDive release is now online.
This update features the integration of a large set of phenotypic and metabolic data generously shared by the Biological Resource Center (CRBIP) of the Institut Pasteur. BacDive now provides data on 97,334 strains, 4080 of which were newly added. The number of total filled data fields grew by almost 30% to 2,675,988 entries.
A careful curation of the genome sequences listed in BacDive resulted in the removal of links to low-quality assemblies and the consolidation of listings of single contigs of WGS projects in assembly accession. The number of sequence entries therefore decreased, while the quality of displayed genomes increased.
BacDive strain pages now contain links to the newly revived StrainInfo database for strain identity information and the resolution of strain identifiers.
Genome-based predictions from the Diaspora project can now be accessed using the API using an optional parameter.
We want to thank all of our users who have sent in suggestions and corrections over the last year, many of which were accepted and become visible with this release.
| BacDive Section | Release 2021 | Release 2022 | Release 2023 | 2022-2023 increase |
| Name and taxonomic classification* | 132,839 | 137,332 | 154,525 | 11% |
| Morphology* | 42,756 | 62,766 | 74,683 | 16% |
| Culture and growth conditions* | 157,622 | 159,833 | 193,351 | 17% |
| Physiology and metabolism* | 1,063,988 | 1,112,931 | 1,691,087 | 34% |
| Isolation, sampling and environmental information* | 156,065 | 175,521 | 187,071 | 6% |
| Application and interaction* | 22,077 | 23,221 | 36,338 | 36% |
| Sequence data* | 106,070 | 122,022 | 109,572 | -11% |
| References* | 68,145 | 128,540 | 229,361 | 44% |
| overall entries* | 1,749,562 | 1,922,166 | 2,675,988 | 28% |
We are proud that after an extensive review and evaluation process, BacDive has been selected as a new ELIXIR Core Data Resource, joining a list of now 32 renowned European life science data resources that are important to biological and biomedical research and long-term preservation of biological data.
BacDive steps into the AI world!
Using support vector machine and deep learning algorithms on genomes of 9023 bacterial strains, we added high quality predicted data to our database including data on:
Check some of our strains with predicted data: Acetobacter pasteurianus, Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris
Prediction data is not available yet in the BacDive API. It will be soon available on demand.
A new BacDive release is online, providing now data on 93,254 strains!
This update includes a major update for data from DSMZ database, including 637 new strains.
We also integrated comprehensive data on 267 strains for the Wink compendium of Actinobacteria, which now comprises data on 1576 strains and is now finalized!
An exiting new feature are our new taxonmaps: for 15.655 strains we could match 16S sequence data with the database MicrobeAtlas and now provide integrated overviews over the global distribution of a taxon.
Find the overall statistics in the table (below).
| BacDive Section | Release 2020 | Release 2021 | Release 2022 | 2021-2022 increase |
| Name and taxonomic classification* | 110,587 | 132,839 | 137,332 | 3% |
| Morphology* | 36,689 | 42,756 | 62,766 | 47% |
| Culture and growth conditions* | 136,586 | 157,622 | 159,833 | 1% |
| Physiology and metabolism* | 332,303 | 1,063,988 | 1,112,931 | 5% |
| Isolation, sampling and environmental information* | 143,496 | 156,065 | 175,521 | 12% |
| Application and interaction* | 21,710 | 22,077 | 23,221 | 5% |
| Sequence data* | 295,734 | 106,070 | 122,022 | 15% |
| References* | 66,571 | 68,145 | 128,540 | 89% |
| overall entries* | 1,143,676 | 1,749,562 | 1,922,166 | 10% |
The BacDive database of the DSMZ was selected as one of 37 databases worldwide as a Global Core Biodata Resource.
In a rigorous selection process, the Global Biodata Coalition chose such resources that are considered critical for global research in the fields of life sciences and biomedicine. The BacDive database has been developed at the DSMZ for 10 years and now joins the list of the world's most important biological databases.
See https://globalbiodata.org/global-biodata-coalition-announces-the-first-set-of-global-core-biodata-resources/ for more information.
A new BacDive release is online. 2604 new type strains from LPSN with their corresponding 2447 sequence accession numbers (16S) and risk assessment information have been integrated in our database.
Currently we offer metadata on 92,150 strains, including 18,710 type strains. An 16% type strains increase since the last update
Some suggestions from our users were included in this update as well. Thank you for making BacDive better!
To find even more information about our strains, we added 56,017 extra literature resources to allow you to dig even deeper into the strains of your interest.
We are also very proud of our new feature, the Smartsearch. Using a google like search now you can search our database for taxonomy, culture collection numbers, NCBI taxid, sequence accession numbers, motility, cell shape and much more.
We have made the BacDive License even more permissive with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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