Help index

Frequently asked questions

Please view the FAQs page to find answers to commonly asked questions.

BioMart help

The HGNC BioMart application allows users to create customised data tables without the need for any programming knowledge by interacting with a form to filter the data and select the columns/attributes they want within the table. This page details how to interact with the BioMart Mart form and provides definitions of the filters and attributes.

Browser Help

Since there are many different browsers and versions of browser being used across the world, here are some helpful tips to which browsers to use and how to enable javascript on your browser to make sure your user experience of our site is a good one.

Custom downloads help

The HGNC Custom Database Download script serves as a front end for a MySQL database and provides a web-based interface which allows users to select columns of data for output, execute limited SQL queries, and save searches for future reference.

Globus file transfer help

Help page specifically to aid a user to download our data download files using the Globus data manager tools.

Gene group help

Help and information related to the new gene group reports.

HCOP help

The HGNC Comparison of Orthology Predictions (HCOP search is a tool that integrates and displays the orthology assertions predicted for a specified human gene, or set of human genes, by eggNOG, Ensembl Compara, HGNC, HomoloGene, Inparanoid, OMA, OrthoDB, OrthoMCL, Panther, PhylomeDB, TreeFam and ZFIN. An indication of the reliability of a prediction is provided by the number of databases which concur. HCOP was originally designed to show orthology predictions between human and mouse, but has been expanded to include data from chimp, macaque, rat, dog, horse, cattle, pig, opossum, platypus, chicken, anole lizard, xenopus, zebrafish, C. elegans, Drosophila and S. cerevisiae, meaning that there are currently 18 genomes available for comparison in HCOP.

Multi-symbol checker help

The multi-symbol checker tool allows the user to type, paste or upload a list of symbols into a search field to check if the symbols are HGNC approved symbols. The results include a ‘match type’ column that shows how each submitted symbol matches the returned HGNC symbol. The user is able to click on the approved symbol to be taken to the relevant Symbol Report to access more information about the gene.

Request symbol help

Help page to offer guidance to those filling in the Request symbol form.

REST web-service help

The genenames.org REST web-service is a convenient and quick way of searching and fetching data from our database within a script/program. Users may request results as either XML or JSON making our data easier to parse.

Search help

Our search options allow users to search all of our active gene symbol reports, gene group reports and static web pages quickly and with ease. The search server utilises Apache Solr which offers a powerful full-text search, hit highlighting and faceted searching. Faceted searching allows you to search for a particular keyword and then filter the results by record/page type, locus group and locus type.

The search form can be found within the mast head of each page. Enter a search term within the search input box and click on the spy glass icon; the default option searches the whole site including gene symbol reports and gene groups. Users can also click on the drop down to the left of the input box and search only specific areas of the site (i.e symbols, gene groups or static web pages).

Statistics & downloads help

Details about the download files contained within the statistics & downloads page and fields contain within.

Symbol report help

Each gene with an approved HGNC symbol has its own Symbol Report that contains our manually curated data and links to many other external biomedical resources. The HGNC "core data" is displayed at the top of the page in a separate box and presents the approved nomenclature, the unique HGNC ID number, synonyms, previous nomenclature, locus type, chromosomal location, gene groups and a HCOP orthology prediction link. The table below the HGNC "core data" provides links to external resources such as homologs in other species (i.e mouse and rat), nucleotide sequences, gene resources, protein resources, clinical resources, publications and other database links.

Useful links

A collection of useful links to biological databases and resources.