Search Tips

How do I search for my gene or list of genes in the online catalog?

Our online catalog uses a smart search box that allows you to search for genes and their regulatory elements based on a variety of different types of annotation. You can search for the promoters and 3’UTR of a single gene or many genes. To search for multiple genes at once, simply paste in a list of gene identifiers on separate lines. The following types of annotation can be used:

SwitchGear Product IDs

You can search for products based on their SwitchGear Product ID (e.g. S123456)

Gene IDs, symbols, or aliases

You can search by Gene IDs (e.g. 3287), symbols (e.g. HSF1), and aliases (e.g. HSTF1) based on Refseq/NCBI annotation of human genes, or search by SwitchGear Gene Model IDs (e.g. CHR7_P0362).

Accession numbers

You can also search by entering Genbank accession numbers of human mRNAs (e.g. M64673) or Refseq accession numbers (e.g. NM_005526) of human genes.

Gene Ontology terms using ID

You can also search based on Gene Ontology IDs to find sets of genes involved in a common biological process, function, or location (e.g. GO:0005515; see for more information)

Gene description

You can also enter terms to do a free text search of gene descriptions. This will search all human NCBI gene names and descriptions when available. Queries must consist of search terms (words) and can be combined using the operators 'and', 'or', and 'not'. By default, terms are combined with 'and'. For example, entering "heat shock" will find all genes that contain "heat" and "shock" in the gene name or description.

For additional questions, please contact us at: or call 650-323-6570