Role: The EST class extends the MAP_MARKER class to represent additional information specifically relevant to ESTs. Because ESTs may later shown to be bonafide genes, it is important to support easy migration of EST to a full-fledged cloned-gene record, or connection of an EST record with an existing cloned_gene.
How/Who enters: Currently known ESTs are entered initially by the DB Admin. In the future, it is expected that authorized submitters will add new ESTs and update or flesh out information in existing records.
Security: Only authorized submitters are allowed to add new EST records to the database; as always, submissions are tagged with the time and the identity of the submitter. Changes to abbreviation and allele constitute nomenclature changes and must be handled via requests to the DB Admin. All other fields may be updated by authorized submitters.
| Superclasses: | GENERIC_OBJECT | |
| DATA_ITEM | comments, primary_pub, related_pubs, record_status | |
| MAP_MARKER | name, marker_type, map_location, amp_product |
cloned_gene (CLONED_GENE, OPTIONAL). In time, it may be established that a sequence originally generated as an EST is a gene. When this happens, the EST is “migrated” into a new CLONED_GENE record. In this case, the EST record remains, but this field contains the ZDB_ID of the CLONED_GENE that the EST gave rise to. Alternatively, if the EST is found to correspond to a known gene, then the ZDB_ID of that cloned gene is used as a pointer to that information.
source (SOURCE, OPTIONAL). This field holds the ZDB_ID# of a SOURCE (i.e. person, lab, or company) from which the EST is currently available.
EST-seq (SEQUENCE, OPTIONAL). THIS FIELD DOES NOT EXIST PHYSICALLY; the association is established by joining with the SEQUENCE class. Each EST may have at most one SEQUENCE record associated with it, with seq_type=EST.
It is not clear how to handle the interface for migrating an EST to a CLONED_GENE.