The Sequence Registry
A sequence in your library is a sequence. A registered one is a catalog entry: it carries an identifier the lab can write on a tube, a type that says what kind of thing it is, and the fields that matter for that kind. PL-0001 on a freezer box means one plasmid, and it means the same thing to everyone in the project.
Registration lives in the sidebar's Registry section, next to Connections, which shows what a sequence came from and what came out of it.
Registering a Sequence
Register Item asks for an Entity Type first, and the type decides both the identifier and the rest of the form. Identifiers count up from one within their type, four digits wide, so the first plasmid is PL-0001. The dialog box shows you which identifier you are about to be given before you commit to it.
| Type | Identifier | What it records |
|---|---|---|
| Plasmid | PL- | Backbone, resistance marker, copy number, promoter, and whether it is circular |
| Strain | ST- | Species, genotype, parent strain, selection marker |
| Oligonucleotide | OL- | Purpose, purification, scale, melting temperature |
| Antibody | AB- | Target, host species, clonality, isotype, supplier, catalog number |
| Cell Line | CL- | Species, tissue, morphology, culture medium, passage number |
Strain, antibody, and cell line each require one field, the one that makes the entry worth looking up later: species for the first and last, target for the antibody.
Opening the tool again on a registered sequence gives you Edit Registration for those fields. The type itself is fixed once assigned, because the identifier is built from it. Unregister frees the identifier and clears that type's fields, and it asks a second time before it does, since the number goes back into circulation and the next registration of that type will take it. Everything else on the sequence stays, including its sign-offs and its comments, so unregistering and registering under a different type is a safe way to correct a mistake.
The Registry Catalog
Registry on the sequences landing opens the catalog on its own. Search it by name, by description, or by identifier such as PL-0001, and narrow it to one entity type with the Type filter. Clicking an entry opens that sequence.
Only registered sequences appear here, which is what separates it from the search box beside it. That box filters the folder you are looking at by name. The registry spans the catalog and searches what you actually wrote down about each entry.
Connections
Connections draws what a sequence is related to: the sequence it was made from, anything made from it, and the samples and analysis it is linked to.
Most of that trail records itself. Saving a tool result as a new sequence, saving a BLAST hit from an open sequence, and saving a construct assembly all write down which sequence they came from, so the lineage builds as you work rather than as an act of bookkeeping.
A BLAST hit saved from New sequence records no parent. It has no sequence to have come from, since you started at the landing rather than inside a construct. Run the same search from an open sequence and the trail is kept.
Clicking a node re-centers the map on it, and its menu opens that record, starts a link from it, or removes a link you no longer want. A sequence that has never been derived from anything and has nothing derived from it says so rather than drawing an empty canvas.