Working with annotations¶

SnapGene files contain a lot of metadata describing the sequence in question. You can access all of this information using AutoSnapGene.

Command-line¶

The command-line interface for interacting with annotations has not been implemented yet.

Python API¶

Below are some examples of how the python API can be used to get sequence annotations. See the API Documentation page for more details.

The pUC19 plasmid map available for download from the SnapGene website is well-annotated:

>>> import autosnapgene as snap
>>> puc = snap.parse('puc19.dna')
>>> puc.author
'New England Biolabs'
>>> puc.organism
'Escherichia coli'
>>> puc.plasmid_type
'Synthetic'
>>> puc.is_confirmed_experimentally
False

Get a description of the plasmid. Note that the description (like many of the text-based metadata fields) is an HTML string:

>>> puc.description
'<html><body>Standard <i>E. coli</i> vector with a multiple cloning site (MCS) for DNA cloning. The MCS is reversed in pUC18.</body></html>'
>>> puc.comments
'See also GenBank accession L09137.'

Get modification dates for the plasmid file. AutoSnapGene uses arrow.Arrow to represent dates. These objects mimic the datetime.datetime API, but are more convenient in a number of ways:

>>> puc.date_created
<Arrow [2012-03-08T00:00:00+00:00]>
>>> puc.date_last_modified
<Arrow [2013-11-25T00:00:00+00:00]>

Get any references associated with the plasmid. Detailed information is available for each reference:

>>> puc.references
[<Reference pubmed_id="2985470">]
>>> puc.references[0].title
'<html><body>Improved M13 phage cloning vectors and host strains: nucleotide sequences of the M13mp18 and pUC19 vectors.</body></html>'
>>> puc.references[0].pubmed_id
'2985470'
>>> puc.references[0].journal
'<html><body>Gene 1985;33:103-19.</body></html>'
>>> puc.references[0].authors
'<html><body>Yanisch-Perron C, Vieira J, Messing J.</body></html>'

Any of the above attributes can be modified:

>>> puc.is_confirmed_experimentally = True
>>> puc.write()