| Feature | CDS |
| Definition | coding sequence; sequence of nucleotides that corresponds with the sequence of amino acids in a protein (location includes stop codon); feature includes amino acid conceptual translation |
| Optional Qualifiers |
/allele="free text" /artificial_location=""heterogeneous population sequenced", "low-quality sequence region"" /codon_start="1 or 2 or 3" /EC_number="free text" /exception=One of the following controlled vocabulary phrases:
/gene="free text" /gene_synonym="free text" /map="free text" /note="free text" /number="free text (with no whitespace characters)" /operon="free text" /product="free text" /pseudo /ribosomal_slippage /standard_name="free text" /translation=contiguous string of one-letter amino acid abbreviations from this Annex paragraph 3, "X" is to be used for AA exceptions. /transl_except=(pos:location,aa:<amino_acid>) where <amino_acid> is the amino acid coded by the codon at the base_range position /transl_table=<integer> where <integer> is the number assigned to the genetic code table /trans_splicing |
| Comment | codon_start qualifier has valid value of 1 or 2 or 3, indicating the offset at which the first complete codon of a coding feature can be found, relative to the first base of that feature; transl_table defines the genetic code table used if other than the Standard oruniversal genetic code table;genetic code exceptions outside the range of the specified tables are reported in transl_except qualifier; only one of the qualifiers translation and pseudo are permitted with a CDS feature key |