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Assertion

An assertion is a statement about the purpose of a particular feature in a genome. The most common type of assertion is the assignment of a Functional Role to a Protein Encoding Gene; however, other types of assertions are possible, and assertions can be made for any type of feature, not just Protein Encoding Genes. The process of making an assertion is called annotation; however, it is not uncommon for the terms annotation and assertion to be used interchangeably.

Inside the NMPDR Website, a single assertion is selected for each feature and given the elevated role of functional assignment. In the Genome Viewer, the functional assignment is also referred to as the function or current assignment of a feature. In the Annotation Overview on the annotation overview page, you can use the history button placed next to the current assignment to see all of the annotations for the feature. This is shown in the picture below.

It is often useful to know what other assertions have been made about a feature. This information is collected in the Annotation Clearinghouse (see Aliases and Equivalent Genes). In the picture below, you can see the clearinghouse results for fig|273036.3.peg.1023. Note that the clearinghouse includes assertions made by other institutions.