One of the goals of the RefSeq project is to represent genes with exceptional biology that do not follow standard decoding rules of protein synthesis. The ornithine decarboxylase antizyme gene is such an example, where a programmed +1 ribosomal frameshifting mechanism occurs and cannot be predicted by conventional computational tools. A set of vertebrate antizyme transcript and protein records were recently the subject of a manual annotation effort to create standards to improve annotation of these gene products by the eukaryotic genome annotation pipeline (32). The RefSeq records were manually annotated with the split CDS feature to reflect ribosomal slippage, and include a ‘ribosomal slippage’ attribute with published evidence, various miscellaneous feature annotations (such as the location of the frameshift site) and a brief summary describing the function and novel properties of the gene (e.g. NM_139081.2). These records can be retrieved from either the Nucleotide or Protein database with the search query: vertebrates[orgn] refseq[filter] ribosomal slippage[prop] antizyme[title]. This search currently finds 242 RefSeq records (NM or NP), which includes transcript variants and protein isoforms.
