As the main biotechnology information resource in US, NCBI maitains a large collection of databases and bioinforamtics tools for molecular biology research. Knowing how to retrieve the exact information you need in an efficient way is the fundamental and most important skill for people interested in Bioinformatics. Very often, you get clearer definition, or deeper understanding, or even the answers for your questions by searching these databases before you use other bioinformatics tools.
On the other hand, every NCBI database is designed and created for some specific purposes. The most common mistake Bioinformatics novices make is to try to search information in an inappropriate database. Therefore, we highly recommend researchers to explore NCBI resources thoroughly to identify which databases are more suitable to answer your questions in mind before you jump to search some common databases, like "Nucleotide" or "Protein" database.
NCBI provides a general description about those databases and tools it maintains at NCBI Site Map. Each database also has its own "Help" page describing its usages in more details. It's worth to read these documentations before you start your search. Most time, for people who search databases blindly will get wrong or incomplete answers for their questions. Entrez is an integrated search engine for many NCBI databases. Therefore, knowing exactly how Entrez works and various search options in Entrez will help you retrieve complete dataset in an effecient way. Entrez Help Document will be a good reference. However, there are some databases not supported by Entrez, for example, LocusLink. In such cases, you need to learn what is best way to query that specific database.
We provide a PowerPoint presentation on introduction to searching NCBI databases. It's a general description, and definately not in depth. However, if you want to get a quick view about some important databases maintained at NCBI and some searching tips, it's a good start point.
Here we list some useful links where people can get all levels of tutorials on NCBI resources.
NCBI Site Map
NCBI Handbook
Databases Supported by Entrez
Entrez Help Document
GenBank Sample Record
No comments:
Post a Comment