MGI releases a new and more powerful Quick Search Tool

JAX® NOTES Issue 513, Spring 2009

Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) has released a new and more powerful version of its Quick Search Tool. Found in the upper right hand corner of most MGI web pages and in the center of the MGI homepage, the tool lets you easily enter and search the database using keywords, accession identifiers, and gene and allele symbols or names. Keywords or phrases entered trigger searches in the following data sets, which then return matching genes and vocabulary terms with annotations in rank order:

Gene Ontology (GO)
Mammalian Phenotype (MP) Ontology
Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM)
InterPro
Protein Information Resource SuperFamily (PIRSF)
Mouse Anatomical Dictionary

The tool automatically performs both "AND" as well as "OR" searches, scoring the "AND" results higher. For example, a search for "decreased tumor growth" (see Figure 1) gives a three star score to results that contain all three words, "decreased" AND "tumor" AND "growth". Four stars are awarded only to exact matches. Exact phrases can be searched by enclosing them in quotes. The Quick Search field supports one wild card, the asterisk, at the end of a word or symbol.

The Genome Features section of the search results (Figure 1) links to MGI Gene Detail pages and to the vocabulary terms for each gene that matches a query. This section also offers the option to "Get more data" by forwarding the results to MGI's Batch Query Form, where you can choose to obtain genome coordinates and accession IDs associated with these genes (see Figure 2).

The Vocabulary Terms section of the search results links to the appropriate vocabulary browser (when available) and to the genes and annotations to that vocabulary term.

At the bottom of your search results page, you are given the option to Search MGI with Google. This search potentially finds additional MGI data objects, such as MGI Gene Detail pages, reference abstracts, and five online books. These results may vary depending on when and how thoroughly Google searches MGI.

To perform more refined searches, MGI offers a variety of query forms that are available from the drop-down Search menu beneath the MGI logo on most MGI web pages.

Please send questions and comments to MGI's User Support, mgi-help@informatics.jax.org.

Figure 1. Abbreviated results of an MGI Quick Search for "decreased tumor growth."

Figure 2. Use the link on Figure 1 and select "Get more data" to view results.