The Alignment Annotations File

Alignment annotations can be imported onto an alignment since version 2.08 of Jalview, via an annotations file. It is a simple ASCII text file consisting of tab delimited records similar to the Sequence Features File, and introduced primarily for use with the Jalview applet.

Alignment annotations files are imported into Jalview in the following ways:

Annotations File Format

The File consists of lines containing an instruction followed by tab delimited fields, and any lines starting with "#" are ignored. The first non-commented out line of a valid Annotations file must begin with :

JALVIEW_ANNOTATION

A row of annotation is added with a line like

GRAPH_TYPE	Label	Values

You can associate an annotation with a sequence by preceding its definition with the line:

SEQUENCE_REF	seq_name	[startIndex]
All Annotations defined after a SEQUENCE_REF command will then be associated with that sequence, and the first field in the Value field list will (optionally) be placed at the startIndex'th column.

Sequence associations are turned off for subsequent annotation definitions by:

SEQUENCE_REF	ALIGNMENT

LINE_GRAPH type annotations can be given a colour, combined onto the same vertical axis, and have abscissa (lines of constant value - so they are horizontal) at particular values using the following lines (respectively):

COLOUR	graph name	colour
COMBINE	graph 1 name	graph 2 name
GRAPHLINE	graph name	value	label	colour

An example Annotation file is given below:

#Comment lines follow the hash symbol
JALVIEW_ANNOTATION
SEQUENCE_REF FER1_MESCR 5
BAR_GRAPH Bar Graph 1 ||-100,-|-200,-|-300,-|-400,-|200,+|300,+|150,+
LINE_GRAPH Green Values 1.1|2.2|1.3|3.4|0.7|1.4|3.3|2.2|2.1|-1.1|3.2
LINE_GRAPH Red Values 2.1|3.2|1.3|-1.4|5.5|1.4|1.3|4.2|-1.1|1.1|3.2
BAR_GRAPH Bar Graph 2 1,.|2,*|3,:|4,.|5,*|4,:|3,.|2|1|1|2|3|4|5|4
NO_GRAPH Icons ||||E,Sheet1|E|E||||H,Sheet 2|H|H|H||||||
NO_GRAPH Purple Letters m|y|p|r|o|t|e|i|n

COLOUR Bar Graph 2 blue
COLOUR Red Values 255,0,0
COLOUR Green Values green
COLOUR Purple Letters 151,52,228
COMBINE Green Values Red Values

GRAPHLINE Red Values 2.6 threshold black