General Directions for ASN1 Format

Some GenBank tools use the ASN1 format. (GenBank also supports FASTA format which is more commonly used.) Also submissions of mtDNA FGS data to GenBank are in ASN1 format.

Please make note of the following:

• mthap looks only at the sequence part, not any part of the header.
• mthap supports ncbi2na and ncbi4na encoded sequences.
• All "N" nucleotides will be ignored to handle the 3107N convention; this is not currently positional. Some incomplete GenBank sequences use N for unsequenced regions.
• The sequence must contain a complete mtDNA sequence. Incomplete sequences may result in strange results.
• Handling of insertions/deletions may vary from other conventions. Please keep this in mind when interpreting the results.
• Alignment will take a few extra seconds depending on the complexity of the sequence. Please be patient.

Brief directions:

1. Go to GenBank.
2. Find an mtDNA sequence you want. (Search "Nucleotide" for the sequence ID, or "homo sapiens mitochodrion" or use my sequence.)
3. In the upper right corner click on "Send".
4. In the popup menu select "Complete Sequence" and "File", choose format "ASN.1" and press the "Create File" button.
5. Save the downloaded ASN1 file somewhere on your computer.
6. Click on the "Browse" button on the mthap page and select the ASN1 file.
7. Click on "Upload."