REST Web Service at HGNC

Molecule Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟HGNC (HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee)

∟REST Web Service at HGNC

Provides a quick introduction of the REST Web Service for the HGNC database, which allows you to search and fetch human gene symbols, names, aliases, and references to external databases.

If you want to access HGNC database from programs, you can use its REST Web service, which supports 2 types of operations:

1. Fetch Operation - Returns all records with details that match a given value of a given searchable field. Here is the GET URL format and some examples:

http://rest.genenames.org/fetch/{field}/{value}

http://rest.genenames.org/fetch/symbol/ZNF3
http://rest.genenames.org/fetch/status/Approved
http://rest.genenames.org/fetch/name/titin

2. Search Operation - Returns all records with id and symbol that match a given search pattern. Here is the GET URL format and some examples:

http://rest.genenames.org/search/{pattern}

where {pattern} can be:
  simple pattern for all seachable fields like BRAF; BRA?; BRA*
  simple pattern for a single seachable field like symbol:BRA*; symbol/BRA*
  complex pattern like: {pattern}+{operator}+{pattern}

http://rest.genenames.org/search/BRAF
http://rest.genenames.org/search/symbol/ZNF*
http://rest.genenames.org/search/symbol:ZNF*+AND+status:Approved

By default, HGNC REST Web service returns result in XML format. But you can change it to JSON format, if you provide the "Accept: application/json" header in the request. For example:

herong$ curl -H "Accept: application/json" \
  http://rest.genenames.org/search/Titin

{"responseHeader":{"status":0,"QTime":2},
 "response":{"numFound":4,"start":0,"maxScore":129.873,
 "docs":[{"hgnc_id":"HGNC:15719","symbol":"OBSCN","score":129.873},
         {"hgnc_id":"HGNC:11610","symbol":"TCAP","score":129.873},
         {"hgnc_id":"HGNC:12403","symbol":"TTN","score":129.873},
         {"hgnc_id":"HGNC:12399","symbol":"MYOT","score":66.198944}]}}