Documentation · Protocol

Accession scheme

The human-readable label of an entity stays editable forever. The accession never changes. NCBI's own sample records recommend searching by accession for exactly this reason.

Shape

An accession is PREFIX:local-id. The prefix is one of 9 controlled values. Parsing never throws: free-text search and accession resolution share the same function, and a miss returns null.

parseAccession("CAGENE:MIDI-SCHEDULING")
{
  "prefix": "CAGENE",
  "localId": "MIDI-SCHEDULING",
  "accession": "CAGENE:MIDI-SCHEDULING"
}

Prefixes

Accession prefixes and whether each entity has its own page
Prefix	Entity	Plural	Canonical page
CAPROJ	Project	Projects	Yes
CAGENOME	Genome	Genomes	Yes
CAGENE	Gene	Genes	Yes
CAALLELE	Allele	Alleles	Yes
CAMUT	Mutation	Mutations	Yes
CAAGENT	Agent	Agents	Yes
CAEV	Evidence	Evidence	Inline on the owner
CAPHENO	Phenotype	Phenotypes	Inline on the owner
CAMEM	Memory	Memories	Inline on the owner

Evidence, phenotypes and memories have accessions so they can be cited. They do not have their own routes — they appear on the genome, mutation or agent that owns them.

Seeded examples

01JKEYLIT000 (Project accession CAPROJ:01JKEYLIT000)Project
01JKEYLIT7H2 (Genome accession CAGENOME:01JKEYLIT7H2)Genome
MIDI-SCHEDULING (Gene accession CAGENE:MIDI-SCHEDULING)Gene
MIDI-SCHEDULING:5 (Allele accession CAALLELE:MIDI-SCHEDULING:5)Allele
882 (Mutation accession CAMUT:882)Mutation
KIDSES:12 (Agent accession CAAGENT:KIDSES:12)Agent
991 (Evidence accession CAEV:991)Evidence
882 (Phenotype accession CAPHENO:882)Phenotype
104 (Memory accession CAMEM:104)Memory

Try a live record: /gene/CAGENE:MIDI-SCHEDULING.