Features

General information

Nucleic acid sequences provide the starting point for describing and understanding the structure, function and development of genetically diverse organisms.
The GenBank, EMBL and DDBJ nucleic-acid sequence databases have always used tables of sites and features to describe the roles and locations of higher-order sequence domains and elements within the genome of an organism.

February 1986 saw the beginning of a collaborative effort between GenBank and EMBL (joined by DDBJ in 1987) to devise a common feature-table format and common standards for annotation practice.

Feature characteristics

• feature key - a word indicating the function of a feature, like CDS or misc_feature.
• location - this defines the part of the sequence to which the feature applies. For more detailed information, see the Feature locations section in this manual.
• qualifiers - auxiliary information about the feature

Features in BiSSAP

BiSSAP supports the features and qualifiers defined by the EBI. You choose these from the pre-defined list in the features and qualifiers boxes.

If the sequence listing file has been imported, the feature keys and qualifier names are converted, so that the case of the letters (upper or lower) is as specified in the standard.

You can also access information about features in BiSSAP via Dynamic Help.