VADR: validation and annotation of virus sequence submissions to GenBank

Alejandro A Schäffer; Eneida Hatcher; Linda Yankie; Lara Shonkwiler; J Rodney Brister; Ilene Karsch-Mizrachi; Eric P Nawrocki

VADR is NCBI's new production software system for checking and annotating non-influenza virus sequence submissions to GenBank. VADR handles both whole genomes and partial genomes. From January 1, 2019 through October 8, 2019, VADR was used to check and annotate 4065 norovirus sequences and 1702 dengue virus sequences. Norovirus and dengue virus researchers can scrutinize the newly annotated sequences and install and use VADR to check sequences that they generate in the future before submitting them to Gen-Bank. VADR implements rigorously documented operational semantics for characterizing sequence problems and other unexpected characteristics, which should simplify the interaction between sequence submitters and GenBank indexers when submitted sequences fail. VADR will be gradually adapted to include more of the viruses in Table 1 and their relatives starting with other members of the family Flaviviridae.