Unverified Comment

As part of the standard submission process, GenBank staff review submissions for biological accuracy. If the staff is unable to verify the accuracy of the submitted sequences and/or annotations, they may add a comment to the record stating that it is unverified. Until the submitter is able to resolve the issues, such records will have the word "UNVERIFIED:" at the beginning of their definition lines and will not be included in BLAST databases.

Types of Unverified Comments

The two types of unverified comments and common reasons for their use are:

1. GenBank staff is unable to verify sequence and/or annotation provided by the submitter.

   • submitter did not supply annotation, particularly of the coding region(s)
   • submitter did not reply to staff correspondence
   • sequence contains unexplained internal stop codon(s)
   • sequence contains potential frameshift(s)

2. GenBank staff is unable to verify source organism provided by the submitter.

   • submitter did not reply to staff correspondence
   • provided source organism is not supported by BLAST or other analysis

3. GenBank staff is unable to verify sequence assembly provided by the submitter.

   • submitter did not reply to staff correspondence
   • sequence is misassembled

4. GenBank staff has noted that the sequence(s) may be contaminated.

   • submitter did not reply to staff correspondence
   • sequence contains contaminating sequence

*These are not comprehensive lists, but represent examples of data types to which the unverified comment may be applied

Removal of the Unverified Comment

In order to update records that were originally labelled &'Unverified&' the following information must be provided. If any of the required elements is incomplete, we will be unable to process your update. For sequence updates:

1. new sequence in FASTA format
2. sequencing technology and assembly program used
3. properly formatted feature table for new annotation

4. supporting evidence for new annotation, such as:

5. RID of BLAST analysis

6. multiple sequence alignment
7. pdf of peer-reviewed publication justifying the specific annotation in the same or closely related species
8. evidence from wetbench experiments (such as RACE data, in vivo expression studies, etc.)

For annotation updates:

1. properly formatted feature table for new annotation

2. supporting evidence for new annotation, such as:

3. RID of BLAST analysis

4. multiple sequence alignment
5. pdf of peer-reviewed publication justifying the specific annotation in the same or closely related species
6. evidence from wetbench experiments (such as RACE data, in vivo expression studies, etc.)

Note that the BLAST analysis and alignment data must be of high quality and cover the entire length of the provided sequence.