FAIRsharing record for: Generic Feature Format Version 2

This FAIRsharing record describes: GFF2 is a supported format in GMOD, but it is now deprecated and if you have a choice you should use GFF3. Unfortunately, data is sometimes only available in GFF2 format. GFF2 has a number of shortcomings compared to GFF3. GFF2 can only represent 2 level feature hierarchies, while GFF3 can support arbitrary levels. GFF2 also does not require that column 3, the feature type, be part of the sequence ontology. It can be any string. This often led to quality control and data exchange problems. The GFF format is a flat tab-delimited file, each line of which corresponds to an annotation, or feature. Each line has nine columns.