download-sequence
Quick Start
- Command:
download-sequence division... - Local executable:
/home/vimalinx/miniforge3/envs/bio/bin/download-sequence - Full reference: See
references/help.md
When To Use This Tool
- Mirror one or more NCBI biological sequence archive divisions into the current directory.
- Build a local batch archive of ASN.1 sequence files for offline processing.
- Use when you want division-wide dumps, not individual accession lookups.
Common Patterns
# 1) Download bacterial and plant ASN.1 sequence batches
download-sequence BCT PLN
# 2) Download viral and mammalian divisions into the current working directory
download-sequence VRL MAM
Recommended Workflow
- Choose the archive division abbreviations you actually need.
- Run the command from a dedicated download directory because files are written into the current working directory.
- Re-run safely if needed; the script skips files that already exist.
- Feed the downloaded ASN.1 archives into downstream EDirect or conversion utilities as needed.
Guardrails
- Despite the name, this command does not fetch a single accession; it downloads division-wide
.aso.gzarchive batches. - The local script lists files under NCBI's
ncbi-asn1area and then downloads matching names, so network access is mandatory even for help-like exploration. - Output lands in the current directory, so run it inside a clean target folder.
- Division filters are applied case-insensitively, but you still need valid archive abbreviations.