Help with Querying (IEDB 3.0)

If you are having trouble performing a query, please see the explanations of the IEDB fields provided in the Data Field Descriptions. For further assistance, please email us at help@iedb.org.

Searching for a Specific Protein

The IEDB allows one to search for the protein by name, accession ID (Genbank ID), or source organism of the protein. You can do all of this in the simple search on the homepage. You can either first go to NCBI's BLAST (http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?PAGE=Proteins&PROGRAM=blastp&BLAST_PROGRAMS=blastp&PAGE_TYPE=BlastSearch&SHOW_DEFAULTS=on) and enter your exact protein sequence to find a matching protein, or if you already know what protein it is and/or what organism it is from, you can search for the protein by name, by source organism, or by GenBank or Uni-prot identifier. The following images provide screen shots of what the search fields look like.

Using the “Antigen” box, type the name of the organism(s) of interest in the “Organism” field, and select the desired organism(s). In the screen shot below, “Influenza A virus” is chosen. Next, type the name of the protein(s) of interest. Only antigens from Influenza A virus for which data is available are displayed. In this example, “Nucleoprotein” is searched. Alternative identifiers, such as Genbank ID, can also be searched.

Clicking “Search” will return all of the data organized in tabular form as seen below. This data can then be further filtered using the search fields on the left side of the screen. For example, the antigen finder located in the “Antigen” box on the left side of the screen can be used to navigate Influenza proteins organized hierarchically, enabling the selection of multiple proteins.