NCBI Reference Sequence (RefSeq) staff derive RefSeq sequence records from various types of primary sequence records that submitters deposit to GenBank or another INSDC collaborating database. That includes genome assembly records. Among all of the assemblies, there are some that are of such high quality and importance to the research community that NCBI staff manually select and categorize them as reference assemblies (also termed reference genomes).  Another RefSeq category of selected genomes are representative assemblies (representative genomes). To learn additional details about reference and representative genomes, see:

• the list of information items presented for each Assembly record and locate RefSeq category as one of the items on the list
• the Reference genome/Representative genome definition in the Assembly database glossary
• the Prokaryotic RefSeq Genomes web page

You can locate reference and/or representative genomes in the Assembly database as follows:

• filtering your search results in the Assembly database by using the RefSeq category filter located on the left side of your search results page
• using Advanced search terms that will allow you to retrieve all of of the reference/representative genomes for a taxonomic group. Examples:
  • all eukaryotic reference genomes
  • all eukaryotic representative genomes
  • all prokaryotic reference genomes
  • all prokaryotic representative genomes