Why enter my GenBank records using the LLNL suggested format?
GenBank records are entered in a loose format. While this allows for a great amount of freedom and facilitates the needs of many users it makes it difficult for computers to process the data.The IMAGE Consortium uses the sequences stored in GenBank for many purposes including our Imagene clustering software and our QC efforts. There are certain important pieces of data we try to determine from a GenBank record. While we have tried to be as robust as possible when determining criteria for parsing a GenBank record our software relies on certain assumptions, which will be explained here.
