Kelytix Information Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. Expert Data Services · Since 2021 contact@kelytix.com
DOMAIN · Biological Sequences

Biological Sequences

Proteins, nucleic acids, modifications — a sequence may look like just a string of letters and numbers, but its real value depends on whether it can be matched back to its numbering, modifications and source. Fail that, and the sequence is unusable.

§ 01

What the Data Looks Like in This Domain

A sequence is not just that string of letters

Sequences are inherently unsuited to being "recognized"

Protein and nucleic-acid sequences are long strings mixing letters and digits, with none of the redundancy that natural language has for error correction. Read one residue as its neighbour and the biological meaning of the entire sequence can change, while the text looks entirely unremarkable.

So the reliable path is not "let the model recognize it", but to treat layout, numbering and context together as constraints for verification.

Line breaks and page spans are the norm

Sequence listings frequently span pages and columns, and are even interrupted by figure captions. If a page-break point is treated as two independent sequences, it directly produces two erroneous records — and errors of this kind are very hard to detect downstream.

The value is hidden in the "attached information"

The same sequence only becomes meaningful when it carries its SEQ ID NO number, modification sites and database cross-references. Extracting the sequence body is only the first step; re-aligning its attached information is what decides usability.

§ 02

Sub-tasks We Handle

The sequence body and its attached information
Body Sequence Extraction and Standardization Extraction and format standardization of protein and nucleic-acid sequences, exportable in common formats such as FASTA Standardization
Layout Cross-page and Cross-column Continuation Reconstruction of sequences spanning page breaks, column breaks and figure captions, recording break-point positions and the basis for continuation Continuation reconstruction
Modifications Decomposition of Modification Information Normalization of modification type, site and notation, keeping the original wording for trace-back Modification layer
Numbering Numbering System Alignment Three-way alignment of SEQ ID NO across body-text citations, the sequence listing and the figures Numbering alignment
Cross-references Database Cross-References Linking to authoritative database identifiers, plus multi-table cleaning and knowledge-base construction in the traditional Chinese medicine domain Cross-references

Short peptides, oligonucleotides and antibody heavy/light chain sequences are all within scope. Antibody data is usually also linked to antigens, chain pairing and binding-affinity constants, and this chain can be executed together with sequence extraction.

§ 03

Related Solutions

Published scenario solutions in this domain

Extract protein and nucleic-acid sequences, standardize formats, decompose modification information, align SEQ ID NO numbering with body-text citations, and handle cross-page continuation and database cross-references, delivering a sequence dataset ready to load into a database.

SEQ ID NOCross-page continuationModification decomposition
§ 04

Frequently Asked Questions

Questions we are often asked before we start

How do you handle sequences broken across pages or columns?

The whole sequence is reconstructed according to continuation rules, and the break-point positions and the basis for continuation are recorded. A page break is not treated as two independent sequences, and we do not stitch by length — continuation must have a basis in layout or numbering, otherwise it manufactures two erroneous records.

What do you do when the notation for modified residues is not standardized?

The original representation is kept and a separate normalized field is created, recording the modification type and site. Different documents may write the same modification differently, and normalizing outright would mask the differences — and those differences are often the part downstream users care about most.

Are sequence similarity and sequence identity the same thing?

No. The determination is based on position-by-position alignment; we do not merge things that merely look alike, and differing sites are marked separately. If similar sequences are wrongly merged, downstream loses critical variant information outright.

How do you handle data such as traditional Chinese medicine knowledge bases?

Entities such as herbs, ingredients, targets and diseases are scattered across several source tables; the focus of processing is cross-table linkage and conflict resolution for the same entity, not single-table extraction. The hard part of such tasks is entity alignment, not text recognition.

Start with one sample datasetNEXT STEP

Send us a representative patent or sequence listing and we can run a small trial annotation first, so you can see directly how break-point continuation and numbering alignment are handled.