Genbank Submission Improvements and Contamination Checks

NCBI receives thousands of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genome submissions each year, both draft WGS (whole genome shotgun) and complete. Recent submission improvements have made it easier for scientists to deposit these genomes in GenBank. One enhancement is that we are unifying the submission of WGS and complete genomes so that they can be submitted through the same system. In addition to collecting metadata about the organism whose genome was sequenced and the methods used to assemble its genome, the submission process includes several validations to confirm that the genome meets some basic requirements, such as being in the expected size range and free of commonly found contaminants. This talk will discuss some of the recent improvements in the Submission Portal and details of some of the validations that are performed before a submission is accepted.