Liftoff annotation files for GRCr8 rat reference genome assembly

We have created a new rat reference genome assembly, GRCr8. This assembly will undergo annotation at NCBI in early 2024. Until this is complete we have generated annotation files for use with the assembly. These have been produced from the existing annotations of the last rat reference genome assembly mRatBN7.2. Annotation of this assembly was performed at NCBI, UCSC Genome Institute and Ensembl. Each of these annotation files have been transfered to the new assembly. The tool used for transfer is Liftoff and is described here: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa1016 For each annotation set we created a full liftoff gff3 of all transfered gene features. We also produced a file in which only annotations of genes nad not their constituent componets were present.These files include the word "genes" in the file name. These are much smaller files and, when loaded into igv genome viewer are searchable to locate gene positions