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PubMed · 11038333

Object-oriented parsing of biological databases with Python.

C Ramu·C Gemünd·T J Gibson
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Abstract

MOTIVATION: While database activities in the biological area are increasing rapidly, rather little is done in the area of parsing them in a simple and object-oriented way. RESULTS: We present here an elegant, simple yet powerful way of parsing biological flat-file databases. We have taken EMBL, SWISSPROT and GENBANK as examples. EMBL and SWISS-PROT do not differ much in the format structure. GENBANK has a very different format structure than EMBL and SWISS-PROT. Extracting the desired fields in an entry (for example a sub-sequence with an associated feature) for later analysis is a constant need in the biological sequence-analysis community: this is illustrated with tools to make new splice-site databases. The interface to the parser is abstract in the sense that the access to all the databases is independent from their different formats, since parsing instructions are hidden.

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C Ramu, C Gemünd, T J Gibson. 2000. Object-oriented parsing of biological databases with Python.. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics%2F16.7.628

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