Role: The ORTHOLOG class was established to represent, in a limited fashion, orthologies between zebrafish and other organisms. Each ORTHOLOG record represents one such relationship, associating a particular cloned gene in zebrafish with its ortholog in another organism. Rather than listing just the name of the ortholog in the other organism, we also want to “cache” some additional information about it like, for example, its map location and its accession number to the database for the other species. This information would be regularly and automatically updated.
How/Who enters: Currently known ORTHOLOGS are entered initially by the DB Admin. In the future, it is expected that authorized submitters will describe new orthologs and update or flesh out information in existing records.
Security: Only authorized submitters are allowed to add new ORTHOLOG records to the database; as always, submissions are tagged with the time and the identity of the submitter. Only the related_pubs of an existing ORTHOLOG may be changed; all other changes must go through the DB_Admin.
| Superclasses: | GENERIC_OBJECT | |
| DATA_ITEM | comments, primary_pub, related_pubs, record_status |
marker_id (CLONED_GENE, REQUIRED). Contains the zdb_id of the CLONED_GENE in zebrafish to which the gene represented in this ORTHOLOG record is orthologous.
organism (closed list{human, pig, mouse, etc.}, REQUIRED). Specifies the organism in which the ortholog represented by this record exists. Options are chosen from a closed set of organisms.
ortho_name (TEXT, REQUIRED). Gives the (current) name of the orthologous gene in the other organism.
accession_num (TEXT, OPTIONAL). If the research community for the specified organism has a database, this field holds the accession number for the record of the orthologous gene in that database. This allows users to “jump” to the other database to view the actual data record for the orthologous gene.
• Should the set of possible organisms be closed, or should we just let users type in something freely? PRO(free): flexibility. PRO(restrained): we can account for all possible options in advance.