Then you could add NOT to Paul's query:
SELECT * FROM your table WHERE sequence NOT REGEXP '^[atcg]+$';
or, equivalently,
SELECT * FROM your table WHERE sequence REGEXP '[^atcg]';
I suspect the latter may be faster, but you'd have to try them to be sure.
Note that pattern matching in mysql is case-insensitive by default. If that matters to you, then you would need to add the BINARY keyword to the WHERE clause:
WHERE sequence NOT REGEXP BINARY '^[atcg]+$';
or
WHERE sequence REGEXP BINARY '[^atcg]';
Michael
The need to go BINARY to detect case also requires that sequence be a BLOB not a TEXT field (I might have the case-sensitive/case-insensitive types reversed),
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