... annotation and dna variables are declared as a list and are assigned the values of match variables 1 and 2 after a successful match.

Note that it's also possible to "capture the captures" to lexicals and die on match failure in a single statement:

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"for my $record (qw(eks---wye  eks---wyyye)) {
   my ($x, $y) = $record =~ m{ \A (eks) .* (wye) \z }xms
     or die qq{malformed record '$record'};
   ;;
   print qq{record '$record': got '$x' '$y'};
   }
"
record 'eks---wye': got 'eks' 'wye'
malformed record 'eks---wyyye' at -e line 1.
[download]

I prefer this practice because it's all too possible, believe me, to insert just one more pattern match test between the original capturing statement and the separate statement intended to assign its capture variables  $1 $2 ... to lexicals, in which case the original capture groups sometimes, but not always, and perhaps quite silently (gotta love this bug!), become invalid.