There used to be a package for this, by Oleg Skylar, but it was deprecated. There is a nice function in the davidTiling experimental data package for extracting attributes from GFF files (probably taken from the gff code base?), I'll do a copy and paste here, since davidTiling is a large download. getAttributeField <- function (x, field, attrsep = ";") { s = strsplit(x, split = attrsep, fixed = TRUE) sapply(s, function(atts) { a = strsplit(atts, split = "=", fixed = TRUE) m = match(field, sapply(a, "[", 1)) if (!is.na(m)) { rv = a[[m]][2] } else { rv = as.character(NA) } return(rv) }) } and here is quick parser gffRead <- function(gffFile, nrows = -1) { cat("Reading ", gffFile, ": ", sep="") gff = read.table(gffFile, sep="\t", as.is=TRUE, quote="", header=FALSE, comment.char="#", nrows = nrows, colClasses=c("character", "character", "character", "integer", "integer", "character", "character", "character", "character")) colnames(gff) = c("seqname", "source", "feature", "start", "end", "score", "strand", "frame", "attributes") cat("found", nrow(gff), "rows with classes:", paste(sapply(gff, class), collapse=", "), "\n") stopifnot(!anyis.na(gff$start)), !anyis.na(gff$end))) return(gff) } Now you can do stuff like gff <- gffRead(gfffile) gff$Name <- getAttributeField(gff$attributes, "Name") gff$ID <- getAttributeField(gff$attributes, "ID") gfffile is just an object holding the file name. Kasper On Oct 21, 2008, at 4:56 , Tobias Straub wrote: > hi Naira > just parse the gff with > > read.delim("gff_file.gff", header=F, comment.char="#") -> gff > > and you get a table that you can filter for gene entries, sth like > gff.genes <- gff[gff[,2]=="gene",] > depending on where and how the gene is specified as a gene > > T. > > On Oct 21, 2008, at 11:00 AM, Naira Naouar wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> I was wondering if there were already tools to read gff files in R? >> I am looking for a fast way to extract gene coordinates from a gff >> file. >> >> Regards, >> Naira >> >> -- >> ================================================================== >> Na?ra Naouar >> Tel:+32 (0)9 331 38 63 >> VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University >> Technologiepark 927, 9052 Gent, BELGIUM >> nanao at psb.ugent.be http://www.psb.ugent.be >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Bioconductor mailing list >> Bioconductor at stat.math.ethz.ch >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioconductor >> Search the archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.biology.informatics.conductor > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Tobias Straub ++4989218075439 Adolf-Butenandt-Institute, M?nchen D > > _______________________________________________ > Bioconductor mailing list > Bioconductor at stat.math.ethz.ch > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioconductor > Search the archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.biology.informatics.conductor

Thank you a lot for all your answers :) Best regards, Naira Michael Lawrence wrote: > > > On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 2:00 AM, Naira Naouar <nanao at="" psb.ugent.be=""> <mailto:nanao at="" psb.ugent.be="">> wrote: > > Dear all, > > I was wondering if there were already tools to read gff files in R? > I am looking for a fast way to extract gene coordinates from a gff > file. > > > The rtracklayer package can do this. > > Just: > track <- import(file) > and the attributes become columns in the featureData slot of 'track'. > > > Regards, > Naira > > -- > ================================================================== > Na?ra Naouar > Tel:+32 (0)9 331 38 63 > VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University > Technologiepark 927, 9052 Gent, BELGIUM > nanao at psb.ugent.be <mailto:nanao at="" psb.ugent.be=""> > http://www.psb.ugent.be > > _______________________________________________ > Bioconductor mailing list > Bioconductor at stat.math.ethz.ch <mailto:bioconductor at="" stat.math.ethz.ch=""> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioconductor > Search the archives: > http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.biology.informatics.conductor > > -- ================================================================== Na?ra Naouar Tel:+32 (0)9 331 38 63 VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University Technologiepark 927, 9052 Gent, BELGIUM nanao at psb.ugent.be http://www.psb.ugent.be