SYNOPSIS

  # parse a file of LocusLink records
  $ll = new Boulder::LocusLink(-accessor=>'File',
                             -param => '/home/data/LocusLink/LL_tmpl');
  while (my $s = $ll->get) {
    print $s->Identifier;
    print $s->Gene;
  }

  # parse flatfile records yourself
  open (LL,"/home/data/LocusLink/LL_tmpl");
  local $/ = "*RECORD*";
  while (<LL>) {
     my $s = Boulder::LocusLink->parse($_);
     # etc.
  }

DESCRIPTION

Boulder::LocusLink provides retrieval and parsing services for LocusLink records

Boulder::LocusLink provides retrieval and parsing services for \s-1NCBI\s0 LocusLink records. It returns Unigene entries in Stone format, allowing easy access to the various fields and values. Boulder::LocusLink is a descendent of Boulder::Stream, and provides a stream-like interface to a series of Stone objects.

Access to LocusLink is provided by one accessors, which give access to local LocusLink database. When you create a new Boulder::LocusLink stream, you provide the accessors, along with accessor-specific parameters that control what entries to fetch. The accessors is:

File

This provides access to local LocusLink entries by reading from a flat file (typically Hs.dat file downloadable from \s-1NCBI\s0's Ftp site). The stream will return a Stone corresponding to each of the entries in the file, starting from the top of the file and working downward. The parameter is the path to the local file.

It is also possible to parse a single LocusLink entry from a text string stored in a scalar variable, returning a Stone object.

Boulder::LocusLink methods

This section lists the public methods that the Boulder::LocusLink class makes available.

new()

# Local fetch via File $ug=new Boulder::LocusLink(-accessor => 'File', -param => '/data/LocusLink/Hs.dat'); The new() method creates a new Boulder::LocusLink stream on the accessor provided. The only possible accessors is File. If successful, the method returns the stream object. Otherwise it returns undef. new() takes the following arguments: -accessor Name of the accessor to use -param Parameters to pass to the accessor Specify the accessor to use with the -accessor argument. If not specified, it defaults to File. -param is an accessor-specific argument. The possibilities is: For File, the -param argument must point to a string-valued scalar, which will be interpreted as the path to the file to read LocusLink entries from.

get()

The get() method is inherited from Boulder::Stream, and simply returns the next parsed LocusLink Stone, or undef if there is nothing more to fetch. It has the same semantics as the parent class, including the ability to restrict access to certain top-level tags.

put()

The put() method is inherited from the parent Boulder::Stream class, and will write the passed Stone to standard output in Boulder format. This means that it is currently not possible to write a Boulder::LocusLink object back into LocusLink flatfile form.

OUTPUT TAGS

The tags returned by the parsing operation are taken from the names shown in the Flat file Hs.dat since no better description of them is provided yet by the database source producer.

Top-Level Tags

These are tags that appear at the top level of the parsed LocusLink entry.

Identifier

The LocusLink identifier of this entry. Identifier is a single-value tag. Example: my $identifierNo = $s->Identifier;

Current_locusid

If a locus has been merged with another, the Current_locusid contains the previous \s-1LOCUSID\s0 line (A bit confusing, shall be called \*(L"previous_locusid\*(R", but this is defined in \s-1NCBI\s0 \s-1README\s0 File ... ). Example:

      my $prevlocusid=$s->Current_locusid;
Organism Source species ased on \s-1NCBI\s0's Taxonomy

Example:

      my $theorganism=$s->Organism;

Example:

      my $thestatus=$s->Status;
LocAss Here comes a complex record ... made up of \s-1LOCUS_STRING\s0, \s-1NM\s0 The value in the \s-1LOCUS\s0 field of the RefSeq record , \s-1NP\s0 The RefSeq accession number for an mRNA record, \s-1PRODUCT\s0 The name of the produc tof this transcript, \s-1TRANSVAR\s0 a variant-specific description, \s-1ASSEMBLY\s0 The Genbank accession used to assemble the refseq record

Example:

      my $theprod=$s->LocAss->Product;
\s-1OFFICIAL_SYMBOL\s0 The symbol used for gene reports, validated by the appropriate nomenclature committee
\s-1PREFERRED_SYMBOL\s0 Interim symbol used for display
\s-1OFFICIAL_GENE_NAME\s0 The gene description used for gene reports validate by the appropriate nomenclatur eommittee. If the symbol is official, the gene name will be official. No records will have both official and interim nomenclature.
\s-1PREFERRED_GENE_NAME\s0 Interim used for display
\s-1PREFERRED_PRODUCT\s0 The name of the product used in the RefSeq record
\s-1ALIAS_SYMBOL\s0 Other symbols associated with this gene
\s-1ALIAS_PROT\s0 Other protein names associated with this gene
PhenoTable A complex record made up of Phenotype Phenotype_ID
SUmmary
Unigene
Omim
Chr
Map
\s-1STS\s0
\s-1ECNUM\s0
ButTable \s-1BUTTON\s0 \s-1LINK\s0
DBTable \s-1DB_DESCR\s0 \s-1DB_LINK\s0
\s-1PMID\s0 a subset of publications associated with this locus with the link being the PubMed unique identifier comma separated

RELATED TO Boulder::LocusLink…

Boulder, Boulder::Blast, Boulder::Genbank

AUTHOR

Lincoln Stein <[email protected]>. Luca I.G. Toldo <[email protected]>

Copyright (c) 1997 Lincoln D. Stein Copyright (c) 1999 Luca I.G. Toldo

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See \s-1DISCLAIMER\s0.txt for disclaimers of warranty.