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Ensembl Archives

About Archive Ensembl

Archive_ensemblThe 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.

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:

http://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Gene/Splice?db=core;g=ENSG00000139618;r=13:31787617-31871809;t=ENST00000380152

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