Research Guides: BIOL 301L: Genetics Lab: Databases

Welcome!

This course guide is for students in Prof. Garrison's BIOL-301L Genetics Lab completing the "Decoding Genomes" research assignment. Below please find a selection of resources for researching genes, genomes, and nucleotide sequences, including National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the librarians.

Article Databases

PubMed Medline
Index of worldwide biomedical journal literature back to the 1950s, with some links to full text. Freely accessible digital archive of the U. S. National Library of Medicine, supplemented with indexing by Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
Library Search
Find full-text access to articles from the SMC Library, or request interlibrary loan of any articles we don't have

Genetics resources and sequence databases

Selected National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases

NCBI Genome
Organizes information on genomes including sequences, maps, chromosomes, assemblies, and annotations
NCBI Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST)
BLAST finds regions of similarity between biological sequences. The program compares nucleotide or protein sequences to sequence databases and calculates the statistical significance.
NCBI Gene
Gene integrates information from a wide range of species. A record may include nomenclature, Reference Sequences (RefSeqs), maps, pathways, variations, phenotypes, and links to genome-, phenotype-, and locus-specific resources worldwide.
NCBI Nucleotide
The Nucleotide database is a collection of sequences from several sources, including GenBank, RefSeq, TPA and PDB. Genome, gene and transcript sequence data provide the foundation for biomedical research and discovery.
NCBI RefSeq: Reference Sequence Database
A comprehensive, integrated, non-redundant, well-annotated set of reference sequences including genomic, transcript, and protein sequences.
NCBI Taxonomy
A curated classification and nomenclature for all of the organisms in the public sequence databases. This currently represents about 10% of the described species of life on the planet.

Additional Resources

Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM)
An online catalog of human genes and genetic disorders.
Vertebrate Genomes Project
The goal of the VGP is to generate near error-free reference genome assemblies of all 66,000 extant vertebrate species.
Ensembl
A genome browser for vertebrate genomes that supports research in comparative genomics, evolution, sequence variation and transcriptional regulation. Ensembl annotate genes, computes multiple alignments, predicts regulatory function and collects disease data.

Genetics Terminology & Definitions

Talking Glossary of Genomic and Genetic Terms
The Talking Glossary (from NIH National Human Genome Research Institute) features more than 250 common genetic terms pronounced and explained in an easy-to-understand way by leading scientists and professionals at the National Human Genome Research Institute.
Glossary of terms used in Datasets
Glossary from the NCBI Datasets for genomic data, with explanations of terms you'll find within the datasets

BIOL 301L: Genetics Lab

BIOL 301L: Genetics library lab handout

Science & Nursing Librarian