Adding Features via Features Tab
In order to add features, first navigate to the “Features” tab in the top banner, then select the “Add” button. This will open the “Add feature” modal box.
(Note, this is most useful if you already know the position where your feature should occur otherwise it may be simpler to first highlight the desired region in your sequence by clicking and dragging; this will autofill the start and end position in the “Add feature” modal.)
In the modal box start by giving the feature a “Name”, then select the feature’s “Type”, the types are the same as those used by the NCBI GenBank database, this means the exported files will be interoperable in most software if exported as a .gb file.
Next you can select which strand is labelled by the feature, this will be indicated by the directionality of the final feature. Features always point from 5’ to 3’ on their respective strand, thus if a feature is labelled as top strand it will be pointing from left to right and if bottom strand is selected it points from left to right.
Next you can add the position of the feature. If you have pre-selected a region the “Position” details will be pre-filled automatically, otherwise you can add your desired positions. After this is finished you can select a color for the feature. For quick access there are “Current colors” which are colors already present in the features within your file. Recent colors are the last colors you used for features creation. If you want a new custom color click on the rectangle under “Choose color” and a color selector will open, you can input color via selecting with the cursor, RGB, HSL or Hex codes.
Lastly, it is also possible to sub-divide features into sections. For this use the “Add segment” button at the bottom left of the modal box. Once selected the first segment will be added, you can optionally give segments a name and type independent of its parent feature’s name or type. You can then select a Start and End point of the segment however these must be within the range of the parent feature. You can also see the size of the segment you have selected and you have the option to delete it. Segments may not overlap, they must be between the previous segment and feature end.
Adding Features via Right Click
It is also possible to add features via the right click menu. To do this, first select a region in your sequence. Then right click the selected region and select “Create” > “New Feature”. This will again open the “Add feature” modal box where you can follow the same steps as above to create new features.
