Refget specifications
What is refget?
Refget is a protocol for identifying and distributing reference biological sequences. It currently consists of 2 standards:
- Refget sequences: a GA4GH-approved standard for individual sequences
- Refget sequence collections: a standard for collections of sequences, under review
What is the refget sequences standard?
The original refget standard, now called Refget sequences, handles sequences only. Refget sequences enables access to reference sequences using an identifier derived from the sequence itself.
What is the refget sequence collections standard?
Refget sequence collections, or seqcol for short, standardizes unique identifiers for collections of sequences. Seqcol identifiers can be used to identify genomes, transcriptomes, or proteomes -- anything that can be represented as a collection of sequences. The seqcol protocol provides:
- implementations of an algorithm for computing sequence identifiers;
- a lookup service to retrieve sequences given a seqcol identifier
- programmatic approach to assessing compatibility among sequence collections.