Extract text from GenBank sequence files (FLAT)
To convert FLAT sequences to another format, you need NCBI BLAST or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Genomic Sequence File" file type, you need software like NCBI BLAST or a similar tool.
A .flat file is primarily a GenBank sequence flat file used to store biological sequence data (such as DNA, RNA, or protein) alongside detailed text-based annotations. These files are typically retrieved from or submitted to the NCBI database. Researchers open these files using bioinformatics software like NCBI BLAST, SnapGene, or programming libraries like BioPython to analyze genetic structures and feature maps.
The primary disadvantage of the GenBank flat format is its verbosity. Because it includes extensive metadata - such as literature references, feature locations, organism taxonomy, and translation keys - the files become unnecessarily large when you only need the raw sequence. Furthermore, this format is highly specific to bioinformatics. Standard text editors often freeze or crash when attempting to process multi-gigabyte .flat genomic databases.
Users frequently need to convert .flat files to FASTA format to isolate the raw sequence data required for alignment tools. Alternatively, converting to GFF (General Feature Format) separates the annotations into a machine-readable tabular structure. Standard online converters fail to parse these biological structures accurately because they do not understand genomic syntax. Just drag and drop your file to identify the format, view it, and convert it when possible. Because a .flat file is essentially plain text, convert.guru can inspect the file, extract the raw sequence strings, and present the readable data even without specialized genomic software.
Convert.Guru analyzes your FLAT file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted PDF files.
If you want to convert FLAT file to , you can use NCBI BLAST or similar software from the "Biological Sequence Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to FLAT, try NCBI BLAST or another comparable tool in the "Biological Sequence Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our FLAT converter.