The following are advanced search options you can use to help better target the search results you're looking for. For a list of helpful search tips, visit our search tip information listing:

BiOGRID ORCS identifier searches can be performed by selecting “By Identifier” from the main search page. To perform an identifier search, you simply enter your term (such as SULT1E1, MAPKAPK2, or TNNC1) and our engine will search for matching identifiers. For a list of our currently supported identifiers, you can check out our supported identifiers for searches listing.

• Wildcard Searches - BioGRID ORCS supports wildcard searching (ie. searching where the search is not exact but rather a range of possible matches) on the TAIL end of any keyword entered in our search field. To perform a wildcard search, simply enter your prefix (must be 3 letters or more) followed by a star (*).
  • Examples: TNN*, CDC*, CLN*, SPO*
  • These will not work: ST*E, *L01, CC* (too short)
• Multi-Identifier Searching - BioGRID ORCS supports multi-identifier searching (ie. searching for more than one gene at a time). Simply enter your query ids one after another separated by commas. You can even intermix wildcard and non-wildcard searches.
  • Examples: MAP7,CLN*,SULT1E1

If you select “By Publication” tab from the main page, you can search by pubmed ID. Simply enter a list of valid pubmed IDs separated by commas and our search will pull up as many as it can find as long as they contain results within our database. Here are some examples:

• 26627737
• 28145866,28611215,27260156,27760321

Be sure that you don't mix pubmed ID searches with full text searches (described below) if for example you search for “10391924 DIABETES” (combining a pubmed and a full text term) our search will simply ignore the full text term and search exclusively for the pubmed id, potentially returning a result you were not interested in. Also, pubmed IDs can contain only numbers 0-9, so any alpha characters will result in an invalid pubmed ID.

Note: BioGRID ORCS does not archive the entire pubmed database. When searching by Pubmed ID you are searching only those publications that have been curated by our curation team. If a publication is not available that you think contains interactions, please contact us at support@thebiogrid.org and let us know the pubmed ID so we can ensure its availability in a future update.

BioGRID ORCS supports searching publications by full text terms which can be performed using boolean operators for greater flexibility and customization of search results. To search a publication by full text terms, simply click on the “By Publication” tab and enter your terms into the text field. Full text searches are performed on 3 fields simultaneously: Title, Authors, and Abstract. Results will be returned if your keywords are found in any of these 3 fields. As with identifier searching, wildcard matches can be performed by appending a * to the TAIL end of any term.

Here are some of the options available to modify your full text search using boolean operators:

1. OR Searching
   • If you search for keywords simply separated by spaces, you are performing an OR search. For example, if you search for Prostate Cancer this is the equivalent of saying return papers containing Prostate OR Cancer OR both. This is most useful for searching multiple relevant terms for a specific project such as Lung Prostate Breast where any one of them is relevant enough to return the publication.
2. AND Searching
   • If you search for keywords prefixed with a plus sign +, you are performing an AND search. For example if you search for +prostate +cancer this is the equivalent of saying return papers containing prostate AND cancer. This is useful when attempting to find papers containing a longer list of relevant keywords.
3. NEGATIVE Searching
   • If you search for keywords prefixed with a minus sign -, you are performing a NEGATIVE search. For example, if you search for +cancer -lung this is the equivalent of saying return papers containing cancer but only if those papers DO NOT contain the keyword lung. You cannot perform an all negative search so a search like -lung -cancer is invalid.
4. EXACT PHRASE Searching
   • If you search for keywords encased in double quotations “, you are performing an EXACT PHRASE search. For example, if you search for “lung cancer” this is the equivalent of saying return papers containing the EXACT PHRASE lung cancer. You can use exact phrase searching in combination with the above options such as +“lung cancer” -signaling which will return papers containing lung cancer but not if they also contain signaling. You should use exact phrase searching anytime you want to find a specifically worded phrase including looking for authors “Smith AC” or exact titles “Analysis of murine HOXA-2 activity in Drosophila melanogaster”. When searching for a title of a publication make sure you put quotes around it, otherwise you'll get back every paper containing any of those words in the title. Also, make sure to remove invalid characters from the title if it contains any…

Here are some practical examples of how to use Full Text searching to retrieve publications of interest:

• Search for papers by a specific author, “Marti A”, or several authors +“Marti A” +“Avruch J”.
• Search for papers on Breast Cancer but not if they contain Human terms, +“Breast Cancer” +Human
• Search for papers on breast cancer or colon cancer, “breast cancer” “colon cancer”
• Search for papers on Chromatin Remodelling in Human, +“Chromatin Remodelling” +Human*

All non-identifier and non-publication searches are controlled vocabulary searches. Examples of these are By Type, By Cell Line, By Enzyme, By Phenotype etc. These searches are very straight forward. Simple select the terms you're interested in (or use the inline search to filter down the larger list) and click search. This will return all results matching those terms.