GGBN-ENA Crossrefs

The ENA Cross-Reference Search service holds cross-references to a number of external data resources linked to ENA records. GGBN has now become one of these resources, currently providing over three million GGBN-ENA crossrefs. By using the relationships between biological material records stored in GGBN, not only can the direct physical resource be cited, but also all derivatives, e.g., DNA, tissue, and specimen. ENA provides a Xref API for programmatic access. GGBN is currently working on its own API.

Display of sequences in GGBN. Accession Types are assigned during processing and invalid records are flagged. In addition the source of information is given. In this example the GGBN member provided in invalid number which has been corrected by the GGBN secretariat

Parent enrichment

GGBN records are connected to 1.5 million unique ENA/NCBI numbers. These connections are enriched by using known relationships between biological material records. This enrichment is only done upwards, e.g. if an ENA number is related to a DNA sample, both its parent tissue and specimen record will inherit this connection. While a known connection between an ENA number and a specimen record is NOT transferred to tissue and or DNA samples, that are derived from that specimen.

Using relationships between biological material records the sequences are related to all material the DNA or tissue is derived from. In this example only one of two DNA sample has the sequence connection, but the parent tissue and specimen inherit this connection.
GGBN crossrefs as displayed in the ENA portal for https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/MN345190. Using the parent enrichment all three material records are connected to this ENA number, while the second DNA (from figure above) is not connected