Dear SEA Faculty,

We’re thrilled that you’ve signed up for the workflow to write a genome announcement this year as part of your SEA-PHAGES course. We’re writing to share a few things that you should note:

1. Template:
Please download the latest version of the QUBES resource for writing an MRA. This resource is updated each year based on feedback and, this year, uses a new template format. Here is a direct link to the updated QUBES resource: https://qubeshub.org/publications/2038/4

New Genome Announcement Template

2. SRA Number
In addition to a GenBank accession number, you will need to include the accession number to a Sequence Read Archive (SRA) for any phage included in your manuscript. The SEA Team will prepare your SRA for you once you’ve requested for it using the following form. Typically, the SRA should become available at NCBI within a month of your request. We recommend requesting the SRA as soon as possible: https://forms.gle/L8EuKaY7e2dc5PJN9

3. Publication fees

The SEA Team is still in the process of negotiating discounted publications fees for those of you who do not have access to funds for the regular publication fee. We will provide an update when we have more information. For now, we intend for all genome announcement manuscripts that you write to first be internally peer-reviewed by the SEA (through the workflow) and to then be submitted to BioRxiv, pre-print server that hosts manuscripts and which become indexed and searchable on PubMed. Once in BioRxiv, manuscripts can then be easily submitted to MRA.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to Vic Sivanathan (sea@hhmi.org). Excited to support you and your students publish your discoveries!

The SEA Team.