Ensembl Archives
About Archive Ensembl
The main Ensembl site www.ensembl.org is updated with the latest data on a monthly basis.
The Ensembl Archive sites have been set up so there is a stable link for at least two years to pages from a particular release (e.g. version 26 from November 2004) in Ensembl.
These links will be suitable for referring to Ensembl pages in publications.
A selection of older archives are being maintained, but the availability of these sites cannot be guaranteed.
For all enquiries, please contact the Ensembl HelpDesk.
Notes
- Ensembl aims to maintain stable identifiers for genes (ENSG), transcripts (ENST), proteins (ENSP) and exons (ENSE) as long as possible. Changes within the genome sequence assembly or an updated genome annotation may dramatically change a gene model. In these cases, the old set of stable IDs is retired and a new one assigned. Gene and transcript pages both have an ID History view which maps changes in the ID from the earliest version in Ensembl.
- Protein family identifiers (fam), Ensembl EST gene identifiers (ENSESTG) and Genscan identifiers (GENSCAN) are currently not stable.
- DAS sources are not archived so any shown are current data.
- BLAST and BLAT are not currently available from the archive site.
List of currently available archives
- Ensembl 54: May 2009 - currently www.ensembl.org
- Ensembl 53: Mar 2009
- Ensembl 52: Dec 2008
- Ensembl 51: Nov 2008
- Ensembl 50: Jul 2008
- Ensembl 49: Mar 2008
- Ensembl 48: Dec 2007
- Ensembl 47: Oct 2007
- Ensembl 46: Aug 2007
- Ensembl 45: Jun 2007
- Ensembl 44: Apr 2007
- Ensembl 43: Feb 2007
- Ensembl 42: Dec 2006
- Ensembl 41: Oct 2006
- Ensembl 40: Aug 2006
- Ensembl 39: Jun 2006
- Ensembl 38: Apr 2006
- Ensembl 37: Feb 2006
- Ensembl 35: Nov 2005
- Ensembl 34: Oct 2005
- Ensembl 31: May 2005
- Ensembl 25: Oct 2004
Linking to the Archive Ensembl sites
The Archive Ensembl sites, (e.g. http://nov2008.archive.ensembl.org), have the format: http://<three-letter-month><year>.archive.ensembl.org
In the footer of each current Ensembl page, there is a link called 'Permanent link', which links to the corresponding page in the Ensembl Archive. A similar link on each archive page links back to the current site (i.e. www.ensembl.org). Note that in archives released prior to the site redesign in Version 51, these links are in the purple lefthand navigation bar.
Unfortunately, owing to the change in site organisation between releases 50 and 51, it is not always possible to map pages one-to-one between the current Ensembl site and the older archives. If the link does not take you to the data you expected, trying using the search facility to locate the information.
Example:
If you are looking at the Alternative Splicing view for human gene BRCA2 on the
main Ensembl site in September 2008, when Ensembl 51
was the current version, the URL would be:
and the equivalent archived page URL would be:
http://nov2008.archive.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Gene/Splice?db=core;g=ENSG00000139618;r=13:31787617-31871809;t=ENST00000380152