GenBank

A new DNA annotation model called Carbon-A has been used to identify around 566 million previously unrecorded gene candidates in genomic data. The tool is aimed at automating genome annotation, a slow and labor-intensive step in biology, and its results have been published alongside details on GenBank-scale annotation. Researchers and bioinformatics observers are discussing what such a large haul of candidate genes could mean for cataloguing microbial diversity and for downstream functional studies.