Book excerpt: This book provides the latest information of life science databases that center in the life science research and drive the development of the field. It introduces the fundamental principles, rationales and methodologies of creating and updating life science databases. The book brings together expertise and renowned researchers in the field of life science databases and brings their experience and tools at the fingertips of the researcher. The book takes bottom-up approach to explain the structure, content and the usability of life science database. Detailed explanation of the content, structure, query and data retrieval are discussed to provide practical use of life science database and to enable the reader to use database and provided tools in practice. The readers will learn the necessary knowledge about the untapped opportunities available in life science databases and how it could be used so as to advance basic research and applied research findings and transforming them to the benefit of human life. Chapter 2 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.