strain-level NCBI taxonomy taxids with BioProject, BioSample and Assembly records

Microbial genome sequence submissions to the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) have been annotated with organism names that include the strain identifier. Each of these strain-level names has been assigned a unique ‘taxid ’ in the NCBI Taxonomy Database. With the significant growth in genome sequencing, it is not possible to continue with the curation of strain-level taxids. In January 2014, NCBI will cease assigning strain-level taxids. Instead, submitters are encouraged provide strain information and rich metadata with their submission to the sequence database, BioProject and BioSample. Toward richer metadata for microbial sequences The NCBI taxonomy database provides the organ-ism nomenclature and classification that is used in sequence entries by the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC [1]; comprising GenBank, ENA and the DDBJ) [2]. The NCBI Taxonomy Group is responsible for curatin