From Jumping Ants to Water Buffalo

It’s never dull in the RefSeq world.

Whenever we check in to see what’s new in NCBI’s Reference Sequence Database (RefSeq), we’re always surprised.

In releasing genome annotations, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) makes it possible for researchers and scientists all over the world to download more genetic information than ever before about all kinds of creatures.

close up on the face and head of a water buffalo

NCBI now offers the genome annotation for the water buffalo. [Photo credit: flowcomm (Flickr | CC BY 2.0)]

In recent months, the NCBI Eukaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline released new annotations in RefSeq for organisms as small or smaller than an ant and as large as a water buffalo:

Alligator sinensis (Chinese alligator)
Athalia rosae (coleseed sawfly)
Bubalus bubalis (water buffalo)
Camponotus floridanus (Florida carpenter ant)
Canis lupus dingo (dingo)
Harpegnathos saltator (Jerdon’s jumping ant)
Melanaphis sacchari (aphid)
Pelodiscus sinensis (Chinese soft-shelled turtle)
Pogonomyrmex barbatus (red harvester ant)
Pomacea canaliculata (gastropod)
Sipha flava (yellow sugarcane aphid)
Theropithecus gelada (gelada)

Genome annotation is the process of finding and designating locations of individual genes and other features of assembled DNA sequences. The data are available for download and can be explored in the Genome Data Viewer, with BLAST, and in the Gene database.

The Reference Sequence Database, better known as RefSeq, has grown from an initial public release of 3,439 human protein-coding transcript sequence records to more than 163 million DNA, transcript, and protein records from more than 81,000 organisms since it launched 19 years ago.