FlyBase documentation

FlyBase text searches are accessible from many different entry points the home page itself, the All Searches page, or the relevant data class page. In most cases, both simple and complex queries are available on the data class pages. FlyBase sections with searchable text include Genes, Aberrations, Clones, People, Stocks, Transposons, FlyBase documentation. News archives, and References (these data classes are described below. Scope of FlyBase Data Types). 

The Aberrations section contains reports on chromosomal rearrangements such as translocations, duplications and deficiencies, ring chromosomes, and inversions (including balancers). The system used for assigning symbols to aberrations is described in the Nomenclature guidelines (in the FlyBase Documents directory). Many aberrations are referred to in the literature by symbol(s) that do not correspond to the valid symbol. FlyBase stores these as synonyms. 

The FlyBase home page includes a link to the Reference Manual. This manual describes the searches, content, and format for each data section, with an explanation of the crosslinks within FlyBase and between FlyBase and external databases. The Reference Manual is extensively hyperlinked within itself, to the files it describes, and to external resources. Each FlyBase data class provides a link, under Documents, back to the relevant section of the reference manual. 

FlyBase makes extensive use of a controlled vocabulary of terms and qualifiers, to allow users to search the database more easily and retrieve data sets with particular properties. The terms are stored in a file, controlled-vocabularies.txt, in the Documents section of FlyBase. Because the term must match the controlled vocabulary entry exactly, the easiest way to perform these searches is by using the pull-down menus in FlyBase complex query forms, which provide all possible search terms for a field. 

Most FlyBase search forms include hyperlinks to Help retrieve documents. For a full description of the searches available on FlyBase, see Reference Manual C, Using FlyBase on the Web under section C.3 FlyBase Search Tools. 

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