The Neighbors REST API gives access to genome sequences via the taxonomy of sequenced life.
Starting from one or more target organisms, the accessions of their genomes can be looked up. In addition, the genome accessions of the targets' closest relatives, their neighbors, can be looked up. Such pairs of samples of target and neighbor genomes make good starting material for developing diagnostic markers.
We use the taxonomy and genome data supplied by the NCBI to build a custom database. Our REST API for querying this database is developed by the Research Group Bioinformatics at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology using our Neighbors package. For more details on genetic marker discovery from whole genome sequences with Neighbors and related software, please read our publication.
| Number of taxa | 2,685,425 |
| Number of genomes | 3,061,870 |
The database was last updated on Jul 22 2025 at 02:00:01 AM CEST.
| # | Name | Query |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | accessions | ?t=9606 |
| 2 | children | ?t=9606 |
| 3 | levels | ?a=GCF_000001405.40,GCA_000002115.2 |
| 4 | mrca | ?t=9606,741158,63221 |
| 5 | names | ?t=9606,9605 |
| 6 | num_genomes | ?t=562 |
| 7 | num_genomes_rec | ?t=562 |
| 8 | parent | ?t=9606 |
| 9 | path | ?t=9606,40674 |
| 10 | ranks | ?t=9606,9605 |
| 11 | subtree | ?t=9606 |
| 12 | taxa_info | ?t=562,9606 |
| 13 | taxi | ?t=E&n=10&p=2 |
| 14 | taxids | ?t=Homo+sapiens |