Annotation of Laurasiatheria Genomes By National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)

National Center for Biotechnology Information's (NCBI) Eukaryotic Genome Annotation (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/annotation_euk/) generates comprehensive sets of genes, transcripts and proteins for finished and unfinished public genome assemblies of a wide range of taxa among invertebrates, vertebrates and plants. Among them is Laurasiatheria, a sub-group of placental mammals that includes several farm and barnyard animals, carnivores as well as moles, shrews, bats, whales and dolphins. NCBI has annotated 32 genomes from this mammalian group till date, many of which incorporate improved features of the annotation pipeline. One such feature is the intelligent transcript model generation utilizing transcript data from GenBank, to circumvent genome assembly gaps. A second feature is the use of RNA-seq data for transcript model prediction (in horse, for example).

These genomes are in scope for curation­­­ support from NCBI’s RefSeq group, which results in addition of “known” RefSeqs (NG_, NM_/NP_, NR_ accessions). These RefSeqs, in turn, serve as reagents for the annotation of related species/taxa that have little or no transcript data. In addition, the genomes also benefit from curation of genes that exhibit exceptional biology. RefSeqs for such genes are annotated across taxa with the transcript region involved in exceptional biology flagged as a miscellaneous feature on the RefSeq record. For example OAZ1 (translational frameshift) is represented in pig (NM_001122994.2), dog (NM_001127234.1) and cow (NM_001127243.2), among others. The streamlined NCBI annotation pipeline, combined with RefSeq curation support, are equipped to provide reliable and value-added annotations to genomes of your interest.