RefSeq release 214 is now available online, from the FTP site, and through NCBI’s Entrez programming utilities, E-utilities.
This full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data available as of September 12, 2022, and contains 328,588,569 records, including 239,609,016 proteins, 47,387,931 RNAs, and sequences from 123,394 organisms. The release is provided in several directories as a complete dataset and also as divided by logical groupings.
Foreign contamination screening
Introducing the new Foreign Contamination Screen (FCS) tool! If you produce assembled genomes, check out FCS, a tool you can run yourself to improve your genome assemblies and facilitate high-quality data submissions to GenBank. FCS is part of the NIH Comparative Genomics Resource (CGR), an NLM project to establish an ecosystem to facilitate reliable comparative genomics analyses for all eukaryotic organisms. See our previous blog post to learn how FCS enhances contaminant detection sensitivity. Continue reading “RefSeq release 214 is available!”→
We are excited to introduce a Foreign Contamination Screen (FCS) tool that you can now run yourself, with enhanced contaminant detection sensitivity to improve your genome assemblies and facilitate high-quality data submissions to GenBank. If you submit genome assembly data to GenBank, the FCS tool is for you!
What is the FCS tool?
FCS, a quality assurance process used to make data suitable for submission, consists of two parts: FCS-adaptor and FCS-GX. FCS-adaptor searches for short sequences that are used as part of the lab preparation process and sometimes wind up in the final assembly by mistake. FCS-GX searches for sequences from a wide range of organisms including bacteria, fungi, protists, viruses, and others to identify sequences that don’t look like they are from the intended organism. In each case, you receive a report of the coordinates and identities of potential contaminants to be reviewed and removed (see Figure 1 for a sample report of the FCS-GX summary output). Both tools are designed to screen both eukaryote and prokaryote genomes.
Figure 1. FCS-GX report showing the summary of contamination identified in a tomato genome. The output indicates there are 83 sequences, adding up to 381 kb total length, to be removed from a mix of insect, fungal, and bacterial sources.
How do I use FCS?
FCS is available from GitHub. Simply download the two programs (FCS-adaptor and FCS-GX), and follow a few steps as outlined in the Quickstart. Both tools are also easy and inexpensive to run on commercial clouds such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and can screen genomes in a fraction of the time of other approaches.
Why is FCS important?
Having high quality data available for analysis is necessary in order to arrive at accurate conclusions during research. With FCS, rapiddetection of contaminants from foreign organisms in assembled genomes ensures that high value data is being provided for submission and available for reuse. We’ve already used FCS-GX to remove over one hundred megabases of contaminants and thousands of erroneous genes and proteins from previously submitted eukaryote genomes to make the data more useful for all.
We want to hear from you!
We will update the FCS tool based on your feedback, so try it out and let us know what you think. Please contact us with comments and suggestions.
FCS is part of the NIH Comparative Genomics Resource (CGR), an NLM project to establish an ecosystem to facilitate reliable comparative genomics analyses for all eukaryotic organisms.
RefSeq release 213 is now available online, from the FTP site and through NCBI’s Entrez programming utilities, E-utilities.
This full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data available as of July 11, 2022, and contains 321,282,996 records, including 234,520,053 proteins, 45,781,716 RNAs, and sequences from 121,461 organisms. The release is provided in several directories as a complete dataset and also as divided by logical groupings. Continue reading “RefSeq release 213”→
We are excited to introduce new and useful updates to the Datasets genome table that let you quickly find and download a genome dataset including genome, transcript and protein sequence, annotation, and a data report.
The new genome table includes many new features and benefits (see Figure 1). With the new genome table you can:
An updated bacterial and archaeal representative genomes collection is available! A total of 16,105 assemblies among the 249,000 prokaryotic assemblies in RefSeq were selected to represent their respective species. The collection has grown by 3.7% since January 2022. A total of 706 species are represented for the first time. In addition, 186 species are represented by a better assembly, and 124 species were removed because of changes in NCBI Taxonomy or uncertainty in their species assignment.
We are excited to announce two improvements to the Read assembly and Annotation Pipeline Tool (RAPT), which allows you to assemble genomic reads for bacterial or archaeal isolates and annotate their genes at the click of a button.
Improved taxonomic assignment
Now RAPT verifies the scientific name you provide with the reads, and corrects it as needed with the Average Nucleotide Identity (ANI) tool, which compares your genome to type strain assemblies in GenBank to place it in the taxonomic tree. So, even if you only have a rough idea of the species you have sequenced, input datasets tailored to your genome will be used for the annotation and you will get the best possible gene set from RAPT. Continue reading “New in RAPT: Better taxonomic assignment and GO annotation”→
The annotation of human assemblies GRCh38.p14 and T2T-CHM13v2.0
We are happy to announce the first de novo annotation of human T2T-CHM13v2.0, the gap-less assembly generated by the T2T Consortium, and the full re-annotation of the human reference assembly, GRCh38.p14. We hope the results will serve both the needs of those eager to explore newly sequenced regions of the genome, including telomeres and centromeres, and those interested in refreshing their interpretation of the human reference, in light of recently curated transcripts and new transcriptomic and other data incorporated in the annotation. Continue reading “Announcing Human Annotation Release 110”→
