FASTA format

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In bioinformatics, FASTA format is a text-based format for representing either nucleic acid sequences or protein sequences, in which base pairs or protein residues are represented using single-letter codes. The format also allows for sequence names and comments to precede the sequences.

The simplicity of FASTA format makes it easy to manipulate and parse sequences using text-processing tools and scripting languages like Perl.

1 Format
2 Sequence identifiers
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Format

A sequence in FASTA format begins with a single-line description, followed by lines of sequence data. The description line is distinguished from the sequence data by a greater-than (">") symbol in the first column. The word following the ">" symbol is the identifier of the sequence, and the rest of the line is the description (both are optional). There should be no space between the ">" and the first letter of the identifier. It is recommended that all lines of text be shorter than 80 characters. The sequence ends if another line starting with a ">" appears; this indicates the start of another sequence. A simple example of one sequence in FASTA format:

>gi|5524211|gb|AAD44166.1| cytochrome b [Elephas maximus maximus]
LCLYTHIGRNIYYGSYLYSETWNTGIMLLLITMATAFMGYVLPWGQMSFWGATVITNLFSAIPYIGTNLV
EWIWGGFSVDKATLNRFFAFHFILPFTMVALAGVHLTFLHETGSNNPLGLTSDSDKIPFHPYYTIKDFLG
LLILILLLLLLALLSPDMLGDPDNHMPADPLNTPLHIKPEWYFLFAYAILRSVPNKLGGVLALFLSIVIL
GLMPFLHTSKHRSMMLRPLSQALFWTLTMDLLTLTWIGSQPVEYPYTIIGQMASILYFSIILAFLPIAGX
IENY

[edit] Header line

The header line, which begins with '>', gives a name and/or a unique identifier for the sequence, and often lots of other information too. Many different sequence databases use standarized headers, which helps when automatically extracting information from the header. The header line may contain more than one header, separated by a ^A (Control-A) character (as in [1]).

After the header line, one or more comments, distinguished by a semi-colon at the beginning of the line, may occur. Most databases and bioinformatics applications do not recognize these comments so their use is discouraged, but they are part of the official format. An example of a multiple sequence FASTA file with generic comment lines follows:

>SEQUENCE_1
;comment line 1 (optional)
MTEITAAMVKELRESTGAGMMDCKNALSETNGDFDKAVQLLREKGLGKAAKKADRLAAEG
LVSVKVSDDFTIAAMRPSYLSYEDLDMTFVENEYKALVAELEKENEERRRLKDPNKPEHK
IPQFASRKQLSDAILKEAEEKIKEELKAQGKPEKIWDNIIPGKMNSFIADNSQLDSKLTL
MGQFYVMDDKKTVEQVIAEKEKEFGGKIKIVEFICFEVGEGLEKKTEDFAAEVAAQL
>SEQUENCE_2
;comment line 1 (optional)
;comment line 2 (optional)
SATVSEINSETDFVAKNDQFIALTKDTTAHIQSNSLQSVEELHSSTINGVKFEEYLKSQI
ATIGENLVVRRFATLKAGANGVVNGYIHTNGRVGVVIAAACDSAEVASKSRDLLRQICMH

[edit] Sequence representation

After the header line and comments, one or more lines may follow describing the sequence: each line of a sequence should have fewer than 80 characters. Sequences may be protein sequences or nucleic acid sequences, and they can contain gaps or alignment characters (see sequence alignment). Sequences are expected to be represented in the standard IUB/IUPAC amino acid and nucleic acid codes, with these exceptions: lower-case letters are accepted and are mapped into upper-case; a single hyphen or dash can be used to represent a gap character; and in amino acid sequences, U and * are acceptable letters (see below). Numerical digits are not allowed but are used in some databases to indicate the position in the sequence.

The nucleic acid codes supported are:

Nucleic Acid Code	Meaning
A	Adenosine
C	Cytidine
G	Guanine
T	Thymidine
U	Uracil
R	G A (puRine)
Y	T C (pYrimidine)
K	G T (Ketone)
M	A C (aMino group)
S	G C (Strong interaction)
W	A T (Weak interaction)
B	G T C (not A) (B comes after A)
D	G A T (not C) (D comes after C)
H	A C T (not G) (H comes after G)
V	G C A (not T, not U) (V comes after U)
N	A G C T (aNy)
-	gap of indeterminate length

The amino acid codes supported are:

Amino Acid Code	Meaning
A	Alanine
B	Aspartic acid or Asparagine
C	Cysteine
D	Aspartic acid
E	Glutamic acid
F	Phenylalanine
G	Glycine
H	Histidine
I	Isoleucine
K	Lysine
L	Leucine
M	Methionine
N	Asparagine
P	Proline
Q	Glutamine
R	Arginine
S	Serine
T	Threonine
U	Selenocysteine
V	Valine
W	Tryptophan
Y	Tyrosine
Z	Glutamic acid or Glutamine
X	any
*	translation stop
-	gap of indeterminate length

[edit] File extension

There is no standard file extension for a text file containing FASTA formatted sequences. FASTA format files often have file extensions like .fa, .mpfa, .fna, .fsa, or .fasta

[edit] Sequence identifiers

The NCBI defined a standard for the unique identifier used for the sequence (SeqID) in the header line. The formatdb man page has this to say on the subject: "formatdb will automatically parse the SeqID and create indexes, but the database identifiers in the FASTA definition line must follow the conventions of the FASTA Defline Format."

However they do not give a definitive description of the FASTA defline format, an attempt to create such a format is given below.

 GenBank                           gi|gi-number|gb|accession|locus
 EMBL Data Library                 gi|gi-number|emb|accession|locus
 DDBJ, DNA Database of Japan       gi|gi-number|dbj|accession|locus
 NBRF PIR                          pir||entry
 Protein Research Foundation       prf||name
 SWISS-PROT                        sp|accession|name
 Brookhaven Protein Data Bank (1)  pdb|entry|chain
 Brookhaven Protein Data Bank (2)  entry:chain|PDBID|CHAIN|SEQUENCE
 Patents                           pat|country|number 
 GenInfo Backbone Id               bbs|number 
 General database identifier       gnl|database|identifier
 NCBI Reference Sequence           ref|accession|locus
 Local Sequence identifier         lcl|identifier