Accession number (bioinformatics) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

An accession number in bioinformatics is a unique identifier given to a DNA

DNA sequence

The sequence or primary structure of a nucleic acid is the composition of atoms that make up the nucleic acid and the chemical bonds that bond those atoms. Because nucleic acids, such as DNA and RNA, are unbranched polymers, this specification is equivalent to specifying the sequence of...

or protein sequence record to allow for tracking of different versions of that sequence record and the associated sequence over time in a single data repository. Because of its relative stability, accession numbers can be utilized as foreign key

Foreign key

In the context of relational databases, a foreign key is a referential constraint between two tables.A foreign key is a field in a relational table that matches a candidate key of another table...

s for referring to a sequence object, but not necessarily to a unique sequence. All sequence information repositories implement the concept of "accession number" but might do so with subtle variations.

UniProt (SwissProt) Knowledgebase

In UniProt documentation, the stated role of the accession number is "to provide a stable way of identifying entries from release to release." One entry (or record) might be associated with multiple accession numbers. Thus, in UniProt, there is no specific relationship between accession number and sequence; the primary relationship is between accession number and knowledgebase record, and a single knowledgebase record can refer to multiple sequences. In the flat version of the data, AC is the field

Field (computer science)

In computer science, data that has several parts can be divided into fields. Relational databases arrange data as sets of database records, also called rows. Each record consists of several fields; the fields of all records form the columns....

delimiter

Delimiter

A delimiter is a sequence of one or more characters used to specify the boundary between separate, independent regions in plain text or other data streams. An example of a delimiter is the comma character, which acts as a field delimiter in a sequence of comma-separated values.Delimiters represent...

for the accession number, the first being the "primary accession number" and all subsequent values being "secondary accession numbers". The proper key field

Key field

A key field is a field or set of fields of a database table which together form a unique identifier for a database record . The aggregate of these fields is usually referred to simply as "the key". Key fields also define searches...

for tracking a UniProt record is the primary accession number. The group of accession numbers associated with a knowledgebase record depends on the history of the record with respect to mergers and splits. New accession numbers arise in two main ways: new sequences (common) and knowledgebase record splits (rare).

LRG

Locus Reference Genomic (LRG) records have unique accession numbers starting with LRG_ followed by a number. They are recommended in the Human Genome Variation Society Nomenclature guidelines as stable genomic reference sequences to report sequence variants in LSDBs and the literature.

Commonly encountered accession numbers

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