Greetings GenBank Users,
GenBank Release 203.0 is now available via FTP from the National Center
for Biotechnology Information (NCBI):
Ftp Site Directory Contents
---------------- --------- ---------------------------------------
ftp.ncbi.nih.gov genbank GenBank Release 203.0 flatfiles
ncbi-asn1 ASN.1 data used to create Release 203.0
Close-of-data for GenBank 203.0 occurred on 08/16/2014. Uncompressed,
the Release 203.0 flatfiles require roughly 652 GB (sequence files only).
The ASN.1 data require approximately 544 GB.
Recent statistics for non-WGS, non-CON sequences:
Release Date Base Pairs Entries
202 Jun 2014 161822845643 173353076
203 Aug 2014 165722980375 174108750
Recent statistics for WGS sequences:
Release Date Base Pairs Entries
202 Jun 2014 719581958743 175779064
203 Aug 2014 774052098731 189080419
During the 65 days between the close dates for GenBank Releases 202.0
and 203.0, the non-WGS/non-CON portion of GenBank grew by 3,900,134,732
basepairs and by 755,674 sequence records. During that same period,
403,182 records were updated. An average of 17,828 non-WGS/non-CON
records were added and/or updated per day.
Between releases 202.0 and 203.0, the WGS component of GenBank grew by
54,470,139,988 basepairs and by 13,301,355 sequence records.
For additional release information, see the README files in either of
the directories mentioned above, and the release notes (gbrel.txt) in
the genbank directory. Sections 1.3 and 1.4 of the release notes
(Changes in Release 203.0 and Upcoming Changes) have been appended
below for your convenience.
* * * Important * * *
A significant change is described in Section 1.4.1 of the release
notes: an anticipated phasing-out of NCBI GI sequence identifiers.
Users who make use of GIs in their information systems and analysis
pipelines should take particular note of that section.
Release 203.0 data, and subsequent updates, are available now via
NCBI's Entrez and Blast services.
As a general guideline, we suggest first transferring the GenBank
release notes (gbrel.txt) whenever a release is being obtained. Check
to make sure that the date and release number in the header of the
release notes are current (eg: August 15 2014, 203.0). If they are
not, interrupt the remaining transfers and then request assistance from
the NCBI Service Desk.
A comprehensive check of the headers of all release files after your
transfers are complete is also suggested. Here's how one might go about
this on a Unix or Linux platform, using csh/tcsh :
set files = `ls gb*.*`
foreach i ($files)
head -10 $i | grep Release
end
Or, if the files are compressed, perhaps:
gzcat $i | head -10 | grep Release
If you encounter problems while ftp'ing or uncompressing Release
203.0, please send email outlining your difficulties to:
info from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Mark Cavanaugh, Michael Kimelman, Ilya Dondoshansky, Sergey Zhdanov,
GenBank
NCBI/NLM/NIH/HHS
1.3 Important Changes in Release 203.0
1.3.1 Organizational changes
The total number of sequence data files increased by 41 with this release:
- the BCT division is now composed of 142 files (+6)
- the CON division is now composed of 278 files (+11)
- the ENV division is now composed of 74 files (+1)
- the EST division is now composed of 476 files (+1)
- the INV division is now composed of 40 files (+1)
- the PAT division is now composed of 210 files (+1)
- the PLN division is now composed of 86 files (+16)
- the PRI division is now composed of 48 files (+1)
- the SYN division is now composed of 8 files (+1)
- the VRL division is now composed of 32 files (+1)
- the VRT division is now composed of 33 files (+1)
1.3.2 GSS File Header Problem
GSS sequences at GenBank are maintained in two different systems, depending
on their origin, and the dumps from those systems occur in parallel. Because
the second dump (for example) has no prior knowledge of exactly how many GSS
files will be dumped by the first, it does not know how to number its own
output files.
There is thus a discrepancy between the filenames and file headers for 123
of the GSS flatfiles in Release 203.0. Consider gbgss165.seq :
GBGSS1.SEQ Genetic Sequence Data Bank
August 15 2014
NCBI-GenBank Flat File Release 203.0
GSS Sequences (Part 1)
87046 loci, 63874704 bases, from 87046 reported sequences
Here, the filename and part number in the header is "1", though the file
has been renamed as "165" based on the number of files dumped from the other
system. We hope to resolve this discrepancy at some point, but the priority
is certainly much lower than many other tasks.
1.4 Upcoming Changes
1.4.1 GI sequence identifiers to be phased out (slowly!) at NCBI
The numeric GI sequence identifier that NCBI assigns to all nucleotide
and protein sequences was first introduced for GenBank Release products
as of GenBank 81.0, in February 1994. See:
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/genbank/release.notes/gb81.release.notes
These simple, uniform, integer-based unique identifiers (which predated the
introduction of Accession.Version sequence identifiers) were crucial to the
development of NCBI's Entrez retrieval system, and have served their purpose
very well for nearly 20 years.
However, as NCBI considers how best to address the expected increase in the
volume of submitted sequence data, it is clear that prior practices will need
to be re-thought. As an example, imagine 100,000 pathogen-related
genomes/samples, each with 5000 proteins, most of which are common to all. We
will be moving toward solutions that represent each unique protein *once*.
The coding region protein products for each genome will likely continue to be
assigned their own Accession.Version identifiers, but (within the NCBI data
model) they will simply *reference* the unique proteins. And, they will no
longer be issued GIs of their own.
Such a change will likely have a significant impact on NCBI users who utilize
GIs in their own information systems and analysis pipelines, so it will not be
introduced quickly. You can expect that a great deal of additional detail will
be made available via NCBI's various announcement mechanisms.
*This* particular announcement is chiefly intended to provide some advance
warning to our users. There _will_ be classes of GenBank sequences that
are not assigned GIs in the not-too-distant future. If GIs are central to
your operations, then it might be appropriate to begin planning a switch to
the use of Accession.Version identifiers instead.
And in fact, NCBI now has several WGS submissions for which GIs have
not been assigned, for both the contigs and the scaffolds.
For example: Here are excerpts of the flatfile representation for the
first ALWZ02 (second assembly-version of the ALWZ project) contig, and the
'singleton' scaffold which is constructed from it:
LOCUS ALWZ020000001 701 bp DNA linear PLN 28-MAY-2013
DEFINITION Picea glauca contig316_0, whole genome shotgun sequence.
ACCESSION ALWZ020000001 ALWZ020000000
VERSION ALWZ020000001.1
DBLINK BioProject: PRJNA83435
....
ORIGIN
1 cgttgtgttg gggcacccaa ccttggtgag gccgtattaa aaagtctacc tccaagccaa
61 aatttgttct tatccatcct ccaactcgtc tttttgccta gtgctcccct atgtggacgt
121 tttcgttgtg gaggagtttt tcgtttgggc gcccatcttg cgaactcacc ttgcattgcg
181 tttggtcgcc caacttgtga acgtgccttg gattgcgttg gggcgcccaa gttgcggacg
241 tgcggacgtg cctttctttg ccgacatgcc ttgcgtttgc gttgcggacg tgcaatgggg
301 cccccagctt gctgacgtgc cttgcgttgc gttggggtgc ccaacttgcc gacgtgcctt
361 gcgttgcgtt ggggcaccca accttggtga ggccgtatta aaaagtctac ctccaagata
421 aaatttgttc ttatccatcc tctagctctt cttttagcct agtgctccct tgtgtggaca
481 ttttcgttgt ggatcatttt ttcgtttagg tgcccatctt gcagacaagc cttgcgttgc
541 gtttgggcac ccatcttgcg gacgcgcctt tcattgcgtt ggggcgccca acgttggtga
601 ggccgtatta aaaagtctac ctccaagaca aaatttgttc ttatccatcc tccatctcgt
661 ctttttgcct agtgctccct tgtgtggacg ttttcgttgc g
//
LOCUS ALWZ02S0000001 701 bp DNA linear CON 14-JUN-2013
DEFINITION Picea glauca scaffold316, whole genome shotgun sequence.
ACCESSION ALWZ02S0000001 ALWZ000000000
VERSION ALWZ02S0000001.1
DBLINK BioProject: PRJNA83435
....
CONTIG join(ALWZ020000001.1:1..701)
//
**Note the absence of a GI value on the VERSION line of these two records**
Sample URLs from which ALWZ02 data may be obtained include:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/wgs/?val=ALWZ02#contigshttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/wgs/?val=ALWZ02#scaffoldshttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/wgs/?download=ALWZ02.gbff.1.gzhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/wgs/?download=ALWZ02S.gbff.1.gzftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/wgs/wgs.ALWZ.1.gbff.gzftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/wgs/wgs.ALWZ.scflds.1.gbff.gz
Unannotated WGS projects consisting of many millions of contigs and
scaffolds represent the first class of records for which GIs are no
longer being assigned. But the practice will ultimately expand to
include other classes of records.
