pgil%histone@LANL.GOV (Paul Gilna) (01/04/91)
Steve Clark asks Is there some process to move sequences out of the Unannotated section to where they really belong? I can reply on this for GenBank: The infamous unannotated division arose some years ago because at that time it was taking too long to enter and annotate a sequence; at the end of the last contract period (1987), our average lag time was some 13 months after the data had appeared in the publication. To initially circumvent this, we devised the unannotated entry, a stripped down, no-biology entry containing only the sequence and some bibliographical data. Entries of this class were recycled through annotation after their release. Over the past few years we have been routinely converting entries out of the unannotated division, at a rate of about 4000 entries or more per year, and indeed we were contractually obliged to do so. However we have gone further than just cycling entries through the unannotated division. The advances we have made in encouraging direct submission (now batting 80% in electronic form) have enabled us to dramatically carve our turnaround time to an average of two weeks. Beginning in 1990, we ceased placing new GenBank entries in the unannotated division. As of now, the only use of the unannotated division is for the temporary parking and cycling of EMBL entries from their tape release (this too will go away soon) and entries where we have difficulty determining their rightful taxonomic home (also temporary). Although it will probably never go away entirely because of its usefulness as a temporary parking place for "difficult" entries, it is still our hope that this division will be essentially empty by the end of this year. Regards, Paul Gilna, GenBank, Los Alamos