Sequence date of Refseq genomes

Question

[alyosamah]

I have several genomes from RefSeq database of GenBank format. ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/refseq/release/bacteria/

How can I find the sequence date of any genome or the date which this genome added to the database using python or any programmatic software tool ?!

[Sishuo Wang]

I think that perhaps BioPython could help you with it. See link1.

You can find a date in the output of print(record), I think.

Answer 1

[Carambakaracho]

AFAIK, closest to what you can get is the release date, which you get easiest via the NCBI e-utils API. BioPython gives you a simple interface to query them via Bio.Entrez which includes a convenient XML parser. In the xml metadata you get from the NCBI, you can get the release data in <AsmReleaseDate_GenBank> or <AsmReleaseDate_RefSeq>

Answer 2

[5heikki]

wget ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/refseq/assembly_summary_refseq.txt
awk -v QUERY="GCF_000001215.4" 'BEGIN{FS="\t"}{if($1 ~ QUERY){print $15}}' assembly_summary_refseq.txt
2014/08/01