• Brief Description
• Scope
• Announcements
• Access and Availability
• Distinguishing Features
• References

The Reference Sequence (RefSeq) collection aims to provide a comprehensive, integrated, non-redundant, well-annotated set of sequences, including genomic DNA, transcripts, and proteins. RefSeq is a foundation for medical, functional, and diversity studies; they provide a stable reference for genome annotation, gene identification and characterization, mutation and polymorphism analysis (especially RefSeqGene records), expression studies, and comparative analyses. [more...]

Scope

NCBI provides RefSeqs for taxonomically diverse organisms including eukaryotes, bacteria, and viruses. Additional records are added to the collection as data become publicly available.

Announcements

September 2009: An update for the human CCDS set was released. This update adds 3,852 CCDS IDs, bringing the total to 23,739 consistently annotated coding regions that pass all CCDS QA tests. [more]

November 11, 2009: RefSeq Release 38 available for FTP This release includes: Proteins: 9,325,214 Organisms: 9,166 Available at: ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/refseq/release/ To receive announcements of future RefSeq releases and incremental large updates please subscribe to NCBI's refseq-announce mail list: refseq-announce

BLAST databases: Formatted genomic, mRNA, and protein RefSeq BLAST databases are available for FTP.

Data Access and Availability

RefSeq is accessible via BLAST, Entrez, and the NCBI FTP site. Information is also available in Entrez Genomes and Entrez Gene, and for some genomes additional information is available in the Map Viewer. Special properties have been defined to facilitate Entrez-based retrieval. Also see: Entrez Query Hints

Distinguishing Features

The main features of the RefSeq collection include:

	non-redundancy
	explicitly linked nucleotide and protein sequences
	updates to reflect current knowledge of sequence data and biology
	data validation and format consistency
	distinct accession series (all accessions include an underscore '_' character)
	ongoing curation by NCBI staff and collaborators, with reviewed records indicated

References

Please refer to the Publications page for a full list of articles describing or using the RefSeq dataset. When using the RefSeq database, please cite one of the following:

The NCBI handbook [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US), National Center for Biotechnology Information; 2002 Oct. Chapter 17, The Reference Sequence (RefSeq) Project. Available from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=Books

NCBI Reference Sequence (RefSeq): a curated non-redundant sequence database of genomes, transcripts and proteins
Pruitt KD, Tatusova, T, Maglott DR
Nucleic Acids Res 2007 Jan 1;35(Database issue):D61-5
[Full Text in PubMed Central]