[Taxacom] Nomina nuda and genbank?

[Dr. David Campbell]

Quoting Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>:

> My understanding is that GenBank won't modify data unless the
> original  
> submitted asks them to. Hence, the authors of the original study on 
> 
> molluscs would need to ask GenBank to make the modifications.


In one case I have encountered, it's obvious that something got 
seriously messed up in the submission process.  I just told GenBank 
about it, so no word yet on how it will play out, but a study that 
amplified soil DNA has sequences assigned in GenBank to random families 
in various phyla, including some marine bivalves.  Not only does the 
sequence BLAST to other phyla (including erroneous sequences from the 
same paper as well as plausible options), but also I'm confident that 
marine bivalves weren't living in a terrestrial sample.  The original 
paper does not obviously provide taxonomic detail for the amplified 
eukaryotic samples.  I don't know how the mollusk and beetle family 
names got assigned to the samples or whether they could be errors for 
nematode or oligochaete families that have similar names.

GenBank did say they would go ahead and correct a typo that I had made, 
which I mentioned at the same time.  

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections Building
Department of Biological Sciences
Biodiversity and Systematics
University of Alabama, Box 870345
Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0345  USA