[A compressed form for presenting data to banks on the primary and spatial structure of biopolymers. Means for accessing compressed data banks].

Description of open CAN format (Compressed Amino acids and Nucleotides) is presented for storing genetic information in compressed form in data banks (DB). Data compression principles are demonstrated in detail on examples of EMBL DB (sequences of nucleotides), SWISSPROT DB (sequences of amino acids) and PDB DB (3D structures). A unified compressed data format provides a possibility to integrate EMBL, SWISSPROT, and PDB DB in one data bank.