Multi-symbol checker help
The multi-symbol checker tool allows the user to type, paste or upload a list of symbols into a search field to check if the symbols are HGNC approved symbols. The results include a ‘match type’ column that shows how each submitted symbol matches the returned HGNC symbol. The user is able to click on the approved symbol to be taken to the relevant Symbol Report to access more information about the gene.
Please note that multi-symbol checker can only be used for searching lists of gene symbols, not gene names.
Step 1
Type, paste or upload a list of symbols to be searched. Symbols can be separated by commas or new lines.
Step 2
Choose your search parameters using the dropdown menus under the search box. There are seven parameters:
- Search case - the default option is case insensitive but you can change this to perform a case sensitive search.
- Output format - the default option is an HTML table; this provides hyperlinks to HGNC gene Symbol Reports. You can choose to return data as a tab delimited text file, which can be saved and imported into tables and spreadsheets.
- Approved symbols - Symbol checker will search approved symbols by default however if you are not interested in finding approved symbols this option can be switched off.
- Previous symbols - search previous symbols within the database. This is on by default but can be switched off to stop searching this field.
- Alias symbols - by default symbol checker will check submitted symbols against aliases of a gene. This can be switched off so that a user can disregard the alias hits.
- Withdrawn - selected by default and will return hits that have been withdrawn within our database.
- Unmatched - When switched on symbol checker will "retain failed matches" includes search terms that do not match any HGNC approved, previous or alias symbols in the results and indicates that these have no match. Numbers (not as part of a symbol) and punctuation are ignored regardless of this switch.
Step 3
The order of the results will be in the same order as the symbols submitted by default. The order can be changed by clicking on the arrows in the header of the table.
Step 4
Review your results.
If a particular input search term matches more than one gene record, these matches will appear in sequential rows in the results table. For example ACS3 will have two results as it is a previous symbol of TWIST1, and an alias of ACSL3.
The results table includes the Input search term, the Match Type, the Approved Name, HGNC ID and chromosomal Location.
The Match Type column describes the relationship between each input search term and the matching HGNC approved symbol. There are 5 match types:
- Approved symbol - the input is the same as an approved symbol (note this search is case insensitive).
- Alias symbol - the input has been added by an HGNC editor as aa alias of the approved symbol.
- Previous symbol - the input was previously an approved gene symbol, but the gene has since been updated with the approved symbol shown.
- Entry withdrawn - the input was an approved symbol for a gene that has since been withdrawn.
- Unmatched - the input does not match or map to any HGNC approved gene symbol. Note that there must be an exact character match between the input and matched term. For example, OCT7 will match as an alias of POU3F2 but OCT-7 will not.
To view more information on a result, click on the approved symbol to be taken to the Symbol Report for that particular gene. Please note this is only possible if the results are returned in the HTML table format.