The NCBI Comparative Genome Viewer (CGV) is an interactive visualization tool for the analysis of whole-genome eukaryotic alignments.

We report a new visualization tool for analysis of whole-genome assembly-assembly alignments, the Comparative Genome Viewer (CGV) (https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/cgv/). CGV visualizes pairwise same-species and cross-species alignments provided by National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) using assembly alignment algorithms developed by us and others. Researchers can examine large structural differences spanning chromosomes, such as inversions or translocations. Users can also navigate to regions of interest, where they can detect and analyze smaller-scale deletions and rearrangements within specific chromosome or gene regions. RefSeq or user-provided gene annotation is displayed where available. CGV currently provides approximately 800 alignments from over 350 animal, plant, and fungal species. CGV and related NCBI viewers are undergoing active development to further meet needs of the research community in comparative genome visualization.

Recommendations for Uniform Variant Calling of SARS-CoV-2 Genome Sequence across Bioinformatic Workflows.

Genomic sequencing of clinical samples to identify emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 has been a key public health tool for curbing the spread of the virus. As a result, an unprecedented number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes were sequenced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed for rapid identification of genetic variants, enabling the timely design and testing of therapies and deployment of new vaccine formulations to combat the new variants. However, despite the technological advances of deep sequencing, the analysis of the raw sequence data generated globally is neither standardized nor consistent, leading to vastly disparate sequences that may impact identification of variants. Here, we show that for both Illumina and Oxford Nanopore sequencing platforms, downstream bioinformatic protocols used by industry, government, and academic groups resulted in different virus sequences from same sample. These bioinformatic workflows produced consensus genomes with differences in single nucleotide polymorphisms, inclusion and exclusion of insertions, and/or deletions, despite using the same raw sequence as input datasets. Here, we compared and characterized such discrepancies and propose a specific suite of parameters and protocols that should be adopted across the field. Consistent results from bioinformatic workflows are fundamental to SARS-CoV-2 and future pathogen surveillance efforts, including pandemic preparation, to allow for a data-driven and timely public health response.

Rapid and sensitive detection of genome contamination at scale with FCS-GX.

Assembled genome sequences are being generated at an exponential rate. Here we present FCS-GX, part of NCBI's Foreign Contamination Screen (FCS) tool suite, optimized to identify and remove contaminant sequences in new genomes. FCS-GX screens most genomes in 0.1-10 min. Testing FCS-GX on artificially fragmented genomes demonstrates high sensitivity and specificity for diverse contaminant species. We used FCS-GX to screen 1.6 million GenBank assemblies and identified 36.8 Gbp of contamination, comprising 0.16% of total bases, with half from 161 assemblies. We updated assemblies in NCBI RefSeq to reduce detected contamination to 0.01% of bases. FCS-GX is available at https://github.com/ncbi/fcs/ or https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10651084 .

GenBank 2024 Update.

GenBank® (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) is a comprehensive, public database that contains 25 trillion base pairs from over 3.7 billion nucleotide sequences for 557 000 formally described species. Daily data exchange with the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) ensures worldwide coverage. Recent updates include policies for including spatio-temporal metadata, clarified documentation for GenBank data processing, enhanced foreign contamination screening tools, new processes in the Submission Portal, migration of Entrez Genome and Assembly displays into NCBI Datasets, and the impending retirement of tbl2asn, replaced by table2asn.

Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) provides online information resources for biology, including the GenBank® nucleic acid sequence database and the PubMed® database of citations and abstracts published in life science journals. NCBI provides search and retrieval operations for most of these data from 35 distinct databases. The E-utilities serve as the programming interface for most of these databases. Resources receiving significant updates in the past year include PubMed, PMC, Bookshelf, SciENcv, the NIH Comparative Genomics Resource (CGR), NCBI Virus, SRA, RefSeq, foreign contamination screening tools, Taxonomy, iCn3D, ClinVar, GTR, MedGen, dbSNP, ALFA, ClinicalTrials.gov, Pathogen Detection, antimicrobial resistance resources, and PubChem. These resources can be accessed through the NCBI home page at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Interactive visualization of whole eukaryote genome alignments using NCBI's Comparative Genome Viewer (CGV).

We report a new visualization tool for analysis of whole genome assembly-assembly alignments, the Comparative Genome Viewer (CGV) (https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/cgv/). CGV visualizes pairwise same-species and cross-species alignments provided by NCBI using assembly alignment algorithms developed by us and others. Researchers can examine the alignments between the two assemblies using two alternate views: a chromosome ideogram-based view or a 2D genome dotplot. Whole genome alignment views expose large structural differences spanning chromosomes, such as inversions or translocations. Users can also navigate to regions of interest, where they can detect and analyze smaller-scale deletions and rearrangements within specific chromosome or gene regions. RefSeq or user-provided gene annotation is displayed in the ideogram view where available. CGV currently provides approximately 700 alignments from over 300 animal, plant, and fungal species. CGV and related NCBI viewers are undergoing active development to further meet needs of the research community in comparative genome visualization.

The status of the human gene catalogue.

Scientists have been trying to identify every gene in the human genome since the initial draft was published in 2001. In the years since, much progress has been made in identifying protein-coding genes, currently estimated to number fewer than 20,000, with an ever-expanding number of distinct protein-coding isoforms. Here we review the status of the human gene catalogue and the efforts to complete it in recent years. Beside the ongoing annotation of protein-coding genes, their isoforms and pseudogenes, the invention of high-throughput RNA sequencing and other technological breakthroughs have led to a rapid growth in the number of reported non-coding RNA genes. For most of these non-coding RNAs, the functional relevance is currently unclear; we look at recent advances that offer paths forward to identifying their functions and towards eventually completing the human gene catalogue. Finally, we examine the need for a universal annotation standard that includes all medically significant genes and maintains their relationships with different reference genomes for the use of the human gene catalogue in clinical settings.

Rapid and sensitive detection of genome contamination at scale with FCS-GX.

Assembled genome sequences are being generated at an exponential rate. Here we present FCS-GX, part of NCBI's Foreign Contamination Screen (FCS) tool suite, optimized to identify and remove contaminant sequences in new genomes. FCS-GX screens most genomes in 0.1-10 minutes. Testing FCS-GX on artificially fragmented genomes demonstrates sensitivity >95% for diverse contaminant species and specificity >99.93%. We used FCS-GX to screen 1.6 million GenBank assemblies and identified 36.8 Gbp of contamination (0.16% of total bases), with half from 161 assemblies. We updated assemblies in NCBI RefSeq to reduce detected contamination to 0.01% of bases. FCS-GX is available at https://github.com/ncbi/fcs/.

The status of the human gene catalogue.

Scientists have been trying to identify all of the genes in the human genome since the initial draft of the genome was published in 2001. Over the intervening years, much progress has been made in identifying protein-coding genes, and the estimated number has shrunk to fewer than 20,000, although the number of distinct protein-coding isoforms has expanded dramatically. The invention of high-throughput RNA sequencing and other technological breakthroughs have led to an explosion in the number of reported non-coding RNA genes, although most of them do not yet have any known function. A combination of recent advances offers a path forward to identifying these functions and towards eventually completing the human gene catalogue. However, much work remains to be done before we have a universal annotation standard that includes all medically significant genes, maintains their relationships with different reference genomes, and describes clinically relevant genetic variants.

Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information in 2023.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) provides online information resources for biology, including the GenBank® nucleic acid sequence database and the PubMed® database of citations and abstracts published in life science journals. NCBI provides search and retrieval operations for most of these data from 35 distinct databases. The E-utilities serve as the programming interface for most of these databases. New resources include the Comparative Genome Resource (CGR) and the BLAST ClusteredNR database. Resources receiving significant updates in the past year include PubMed, PMC, Bookshelf, IgBLAST, GDV, RefSeq, NCBI Virus, GenBank type assemblies, iCn3D, ClinVar, GTR, dbGaP, ALFA, ClinicalTrials.gov, Pathogen Detection, antimicrobial resistance resources, and PubChem. These resources can be accessed through the NCBI home page at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

GenBank 2023 update.

GenBank® (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) is a comprehensive, public database that contains 19.6 trillion base pairs from over 2.9 billion nucleotide sequences for 504 000 formally described species. Daily data exchange with the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) ensures worldwide coverage. Recent updates include resources for data from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, NCBI Datasets, BLAST ClusteredNR, the Submission Portal, table2asn, a Foreign Contamination Screening tool and BioSample.

Towards increased accuracy and reproducibility in SARS-CoV-2 next generation sequence analysis for public health surveillance.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 surveillance efforts integrated genome sequencing of clinical samples to identify emergent viral variants and to support rapid experimental examination of genome-informed vaccine and therapeutic designs. Given the broad range of methods applied to generate new viral genomes, it is critical that consensus and variant calling tools yield consistent results across disparate pipelines. Here we examine the impact of sequencing technologies (Illumina and Oxford Nanopore) and 7 different downstream bioinformatic protocols on SARS-CoV-2 variant calling as part of the NIH Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) Tracking Resistance and Coronavirus Evolution (TRACE) initiative, a public-private partnership established to address the COVID-19 outbreak. Our results indicate that bioinformatic workflows can yield consensus genomes with different single nucleotide polymorphisms, insertions, and/or deletions even when using the same raw sequence input datasets. We introduce the use of a specific suite of parameters and protocols that greatly improves the agreement among pipelines developed by diverse organizations. Such consistency among bioinformatic pipelines is fundamental to SARS-CoV-2 and future pathogen surveillance efforts. The application of analysis standards is necessary to more accurately document phylogenomic trends and support data-driven public health responses.

A joint NCBI and EMBL-EBI transcript set for clinical genomics and research.

Comprehensive genome annotation is essential to understand the impact of clinically relevant variants. However, the absence of a standard for clinical reporting and browser display complicates the process of consistent interpretation and reporting. To address these challenges, Ensembl/GENCODE1 and RefSeq2 launched a joint initiative, the Matched Annotation from NCBI and EMBL-EBI (MANE) collaboration, to converge on human gene and transcript annotation and to jointly define a high-value set of transcripts and corresponding proteins. Here, we describe the MANE transcript sets for use as universal standards for variant reporting and browser display. The MANE Select set identifies a representative transcript for each human protein-coding gene, whereas the MANE Plus Clinical set provides additional transcripts at loci where the Select transcripts alone are not sufficient to report all currently known clinical variants. Each MANE transcript represents an exact match between the exonic sequences of an Ensembl/GENCODE transcript and its counterpart in RefSeq such that the identifiers can be used synonymously. We have now released MANE Select transcripts for 97% of human protein-coding genes, including all American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics Secondary Findings list v3.0 (ref. 3) genes. MANE transcripts are accessible from major genome browsers and key resources. Widespread adoption of these transcript sets will increase the consistency of reporting, facilitate the exchange of data regardless of the annotation source and help to streamline clinical interpretation.

Standards recommendations for the Earth BioGenome Project.

A global international initiative, such as the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), requires both agreement and coordination on standards to ensure that the collective effort generates rapid progress toward its goals. To this end, the EBP initiated five technical standards committees comprising volunteer members from the global genomics scientific community: Sample Collection and Processing, Sequencing and Assembly, Annotation, Analysis, and IT and Informatics. The current versions of the resulting standards documents are available on the EBP website, with the recognition that opportunities, technologies, and challenges may improve or change in the future, requiring flexibility for the EBP to meet its goals. Here, we describe some highlights from the proposed standards, and areas where additional challenges will need to be met.

GenBank.

GenBank® (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) is a comprehensive, public database that contains 15.3 trillion base pairs from over 2.5 billion nucleotide sequences for 504 000 formally described species. Recent updates include resources for data from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including a SARS-CoV-2 landing page, NCBI Datasets, NCBI Virus and the Submission Portal. We also discuss upcoming changes to GI identifiers, a new data management interface for BioProject, and advice for providing contextual metadata in submissions.

Database resources of the national center for biotechnology information.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) produces a variety of online information resources for biology, including the GenBank® nucleic acid sequence database and the PubMed® database of citations and abstracts published in life science journals. NCBI provides search and retrieval operations for most of these data from 35 distinct databases. The E-utilities serve as the programming interface for the most of these databases. Resources receiving significant updates in the past year include PubMed, PMC, Bookshelf, RefSeq, SRA, Virus, dbSNP, dbVar, ClinicalTrials.gov, MMDB, iCn3D and PubChem. These resources can be accessed through the NCBI home page at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

RefSeq Functional Elements as experimentally assayed nongenic reference standards and functional interactions in human and mouse.

Eukaryotic genomes contain many nongenic elements that function in gene regulation, chromosome organization, recombination, repair, or replication, and mutation of those elements can affect genome function and cause disease. Although numerous epigenomic studies provide high coverage of gene regulatory regions, those data are not usually exposed in traditional genome annotation and can be difficult to access and interpret without field-specific expertise. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) therefore provides RefSeq Functional Elements (RefSeqFEs), which represent experimentally validated human and mouse nongenic elements derived from the literature. The curated data set is comprised of richly annotated sequence records, descriptive records in the NCBI Gene database, reference genome feature annotation, and activity-based interactions between nongenic regions, target genes, and each other. The data set provides succinct functional details and transparent experimental evidence, leverages data from multiple experimental sources, is readily accessible and adaptable, and uses a flexible data model. The data have multiple uses for basic functional discovery, bioinformatics studies, genetic variant interpretation; as known positive controls for epigenomic data evaluation; and as reference standards for functional interactions. Comparisons to other gene regulatory data sets show that the RefSeqFE data set includes a wider range of feature types representing more areas of biology, but it is comparatively smaller and subject to data selection biases. RefSeqFEs thus provide an alternative and complementary resource for experimentally assayed functional elements, with future data set growth expected.

Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) provides a large suite of online resources for biological information and data, including the GenBank® nucleic acid sequence database and the PubMed® database of citations and abstracts published in life science journals. The Entrez system provides search and retrieval operations for most of these data from 34 distinct databases. The E-utilities serve as the programming interface for the Entrez system. Custom implementations of the BLAST program provide sequence-based searching of many specialized datasets. New resources released in the past year include a new PubMed interface and NCBI datasets. Additional resources that were updated in the past year include PMC, Bookshelf, Genome Data Viewer, SRA, ClinVar, dbSNP, dbVar, Pathogen Detection, BLAST, Primer-BLAST, IgBLAST, iCn3D and PubChem. All of these resources can be accessed through the NCBI home page at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

GenBank.

GenBank® (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) is a comprehensive, public database that contains 9.9 trillion base pairs from over 2.1 billion nucleotide sequences for 478 000 formally described species. Daily data exchange with the European Nucleotide Archive and the DNA Data Bank of Japan ensures worldwide coverage. Recent updates include new resources for data from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, updates to the NCBI Submission Portal and associated submission wizards for dengue and SARS-CoV-2 viruses, new taxonomy queries for viruses and prokaryotes, and simplified submission processes for EST and GSS sequences.

Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) provides a large suite of online resources for biological information and data, including the GenBank® nucleic acid sequence database and the PubMed database of citations and abstracts published in life science journals. The Entrez system provides search and retrieval operations for most of these data from 35 distinct databases. The E-utilities serve as the programming interface for the Entrez system. Custom implementations of the BLAST program provide sequence-based searching of many specialized datasets. New resources released in the past year include a new PubMed interface, a sequence database search and a gene orthologs page. Additional resources that were updated in the past year include PMC, Bookshelf, My Bibliography, Assembly, RefSeq, viral genomes, the prokaryotic genome annotation pipeline, Genome Workbench, dbSNP, BLAST, Primer-BLAST, IgBLAST and PubChem. All of these resources can be accessed through the NCBI home page at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.