Sequin Quick Guide

Sequin for Database Submissions and Updates:
A Quick Guide

Introduction

Sequin is a stand-alone software tool developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) for submitting and updating sequences to the GenBank, EMBL, and DDBJ databases. Sequin has the capacity to handle long sequences and sets of sequences (segmented entries, as well as population, phylogenetic, and mutation studies). It also allows sequence editing and updating, and provides complex annotation capabilities. In addition, Sequin contains a number of built-in validation functions for enhanced quality assurance.

This overview is intended to provide a quick guide to Sequin's capabilities, including automatic annotation of coding regions, the graphical viewer, quality control features, and editing features. We suggest that you read this entire document before beginning your Sequin submission. More detailed instructions on these and other functions can be found in Sequin's on-screen Help file, also available on the World-Wide Web from the Sequin homepage at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Sequin/

Email help is also available from info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Basic Sequin Organization

Sequin is organized into a series of forms to (1) enter submitting authors, (2) enter organism and sequences, (3) enter information such as strain, gene, and protein names, (4) view the complete submission, and (5) edit and annotate the submission. The goal is to go quickly from raw sequence data to an assembled record that can be viewed, edited, and submitted to your database of choice.

Advance through the pages that make up each form by clicking on labeled folder tabs or the Next Page button. After the basic information forms have been completed and the sequence data imported, Sequin provides a complete view of your submission, in your choice of text or graphic format. At this point, any of the information fields can be easily modified by double-clicking on any area of the record, and additional biological annotations can be entered by selecting from a menu.

Sequin has an on-screen Help file that is opened automatically when you start the program. Because it is context sensitive, the Help text will change and follow your steps as you progress through the program. A "Find" function is also provided.