Fasta Validation

Many CAMERA workflows require a input files in FASTA or MultiFASTA format. CAMERA may perform client-side and/or server-side FASTA sequence validation.

Please review the following basic FASTA formatting rules:

  • Files must be ASCII plain text. Be careful not to use Real Text Format which looks similar.
  • Files must begin with a single definition line starting with a '>' followed by some text (e.g. "> ID 234234").
  • Sequence can not contain spaces (e.g. akninkslsa lgnvisalae is not valid). Note that certain pages from GenBank display the sequence with spaces. Select the FASTA Display Settings to retrieve the properly formatted data.
  • MultiFASTA files must have a unique defline for each sequence.
  • Files cannot be compressed nor bundled/archived (e.g. zip, tar, gz).

We suggest the folling applications for working with FASTA files:


If you have additional questions regarding the FASTA format validation, please contact us at: camera-help@calit2.net