The Annotation Goose displays short bits of descriptive text indexed by an identifier, such as ORF, gene, or protein name. Features include keyword search and broadcasting lists of identifiers to and from the gaggle.

Tab-delimited file format

The annotation goose accepts annotations in tab-delimited files where the first row holds column titles and the first column holds an identifier which can be matched against data from other sources.

ORF       Gene      Function
VNG0001H  VNG0001H  hypothetical protein
VNG0002G  yvrO      amino acid ABC transporter, ATP-binding protein
VNG0003C  VNG0003C  conserved hypothetical protein
...

In the example above, the first column is an ORF identifier. The second column is a common name for the gene, if one exists. The annotation itself is in the third column.

While the example has three columns, the Annotation Goose can load tab-delimited files with arbitrary numbers of columns.

Sources of Annotations

TIGR's Comprehensive Microbial Resource is an excellent source of annotations for microbial organisms. Reformatting to tab-delimitted format is required, so scripting skills come in handy.