A select group of vertebrates including Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Rattus norvegicus, Gallus gallus, Bos taurus and Danio rerio are the major focus of our transcript- and literature-based manual curation efforts. Curators generally work from lists of genes with data conflicts identified by quality assurance (QA) tests, some of which were previously described (12). They follow a detailed set of guidelines when analyzing each gene in order to ensure cross-person consistency in the curated dataset. This analysis involves in-depth sequence assessment and literature review to create reference transcripts, proteins, pseudogenes and RefSeqGene records. RefSeq curators generate transcript variants, resolve sequence errors, remove inaccurate information, update records to correctly represent the biology of the locus, and add valuable functional information to some RefSeq records such as improved protein names, a summary of the function of the gene product, functional features of the gene, and/or relevant publications. Manual curation and literature review by the RefSeq group can result in the representation of unique variants and isoforms that would not be predicted when based solely on computational analysis. For instance, literature review of
