Do you need a quick way to annotate features on a similar set of sequences for your GenBank submission? You can now submit sequences from the same region or gene in an alignment format in BankIt and use the new ‘Feature propagation option’ (Figure 1) to apply features from a single sequence to other aligned sequences. You simply annotate one sequence and then copy that annotation across all the sequences in your submission.
Here’s how you can propagate features in three easy steps:
- Provide nucleotide sequences in an alignment format.
- Select a sequence and annotate it.
- Propagate the features and edit results.
This helps you more efficiently and consistently annotate biological features while improving the quality of your GenBank submission. Better annotation also helps NCBI review your submission quickly. You can get started using Feature propagation on your submission here.
Figure 1. BankIt web-submission tool showing the Feature propagation option (top panel) and an example of successfully propagated features (bottom panel).
If you normally use Sequin to submit alignments and propagate features, we recommend switching to BankIt. NCBI is retiring Sequin as part of an effort to consolidate and simplify sequence submission. See the ‘about BankIt’ page to learn more about web-based submissions.
Your feedback on this first version of web-based feature propagation will help us improve the functionality for a future centralized system for GenBank submission. Please contact suggest@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov with questions, feedback, or to learn more about new sequence submission features in development.