Hi Katharina, Adding the position parameter to the url is equivalent to entering a term in the position/search box in the browser. The browser looks for matches across many tracks, and if there are many search results for your search term, you will get a page with links to the matching tracks.
This FAQ describes how to add an extra parameter, singleSearch, to the URL to limit the search for a gene symbol to a single track: http://genome.ucsc.edu/FAQ/FAQlink.html#link3 You could use knownCanonical with a gene symbol, as outlined in the FAQ, which will take you to a match in the UCSC Genes track. You could also specify the RefSeq Genes track. For many tracks, the table name is the value to use for singleSearch, but for RefSeq Genes, there are two searches defined: "refLink," for gene symbol searches, and "refGeneAcc," for accession searches. So, for instance, these URLs both work: http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?org=human&db=hg19&singleSearch=refLink&position=GABRA3 http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?org=human&db=hg19&singleSearch=refGeneAcc&position=NM_000808 They take you to the RefSeq Gene location via the gene symbol or the accession. (Of course, you will want to use your custom track url instead.) I hope this helps. If you have further questions, please contact us again at [email protected]. -- Brooke Rhead UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group On 4/20/12 10:46 AM, Katharina Hayer wrote: > Hello, > > Is it possible to create a permalink URL that contains information both from the gene symbol and my custom track. I tried different variations were I manipulated the url: > <custom track url>&position=<gene symbol> or > <custom track url>&position=<REFseq id> > > but this only takes me to some sort of table, where I can click on > the desired page. Unfortunately the resulting link does not contain any information about the symbol or the refseq id anymore. > > Thank you, > Katharina > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Genome maillist - [email protected] > https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genome _______________________________________________ Genome maillist - [email protected] https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genome
