Why are there so many accession numbers and IDs associated with each clone? What do they all mean?
The I.M.A.G.E. cloneID is a unique identifier assigned by I.M.A.G.E. to each clone. All sequences derived from a given clone will reference the same I.M.A.G.E. cloneID, and there may be more than one Genbank entry for a given I.M.A.G.E. cloneID (ie one for the 5′ EST, one for the 3′ EST, one for the full-insert sequence, etc). Each sequence entry gets a unique Genbank accession number and a unique GI number (both assigned by the NCBI). All full-length MGC sequence entries are also assigned a unique MGC ID by the Mammalian Gene Collection project. A subset of mouse clones have been assigned an MGI ID from the Jackson Laboratory. The I.M.A.G.E. distributors may also assign internal tracking IDs to the clones. When in doubt, you can ALWAYS use the I.M.A.G.E. cloneID to order the clone you want and as this is the simplest and most straightforward option, this is what we encourage everyone to do.
