The Bermuda Principles called for automatic release of sequence assemblies larger than 1 kb, meaning 1 kilobase.
The policy emerged from Human Genome Project strategy meetings in Bermuda in the mid-1990s. Its central idea was that publicly funded genomic data should enter public databases rapidly, preferably within 24 hours, rather than being held until researchers had published a paper.
The threshold is easy to confuse with 1 Mb or 100 kb. A kilobase is 1,000 DNA base pairs, so 1 kb is a very small assembly compared with the roughly 3-billion-base human genome. The wording was “larger than 1 kb,” but “1 kb” is the standard quiz answer for the minimum threshold.
The principles also urged immediate submission of finished, annotated sequences and aimed to keep the data freely available in the public domain. This rapid-release model became an influential precedent for open data sharing in genomics and helped make the public Human Genome Project’s results broadly accessible.