SILVA is a comprehensive online resource providing quality-checked, aligned and classified ribosomal RNA gene sequences for the research community worldwide. The project offers manually curated taxonomic classifications for the three domains of life, standardized reference datasets, and tools for classifying microbial diversity.

For more than 30 years now, the ribosomal RNA gene has been considered the gold standard for molecular taxonomy and identification of prokaryotes.

SILVA has been started in 2007 at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and joined the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ) and the DSMZ Digital Diversity consortium (D3) at the beginning of 2023.

SILVA is recognized as Global Core Biodata Resource and ELIXIR Core Data Resource . The two original articles describing the resource received more than 38k citations by December 2025.

Our relationship to SILVA

Ribocon was part of the founding team of SILVA and has helped to shape and maintain the project over the years. In addition to project-specific support, our focus (as an SME) was on being another point of contact for SILVA users from non-academic environments, who often have specific requirements that are not directly covered by public resources.

With the transfer of SILVA to the DSMZ in 2023, Ribocon has taken a step back, but we continue to maintain a close relationship and support the project with our expertise based on nearly two decades of shared responsibility.