well recorded data? - how would i know? (Aug/26/2007 )

hi
could anyone give me cues on how i could make sure that the data i obtained from databases are accurately recorded and well curated?
thanks!

---

What kind of data??
Most of the time we can’t be sure, even information in paper or the gene bank could be wrong, but If you’ll be more specific we could give you clues or al least share our experiences!

---

hi
for example information obtained from BLAST search...some entries might use an older name or different name.
How could i cross check that they were similar but not of 2 diff genes if i were to start from scratch and new in the area.
thanks!

---

hi heidi,

are you sure it is genes you're looking at? you could try to use different databases, depending on which organism you're using for homologous genes. many many entries are repeated with different names, you could do alignments with the specific sequences you have and see if they're the same of differ, also do the mapping for those sequences (if available).

---