BOL

This is an extract of taxdump-readme.txt to be found at 
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/pub/taxonomy/

The content of the archive
--------------------------

It may look like this:

delnodes.dmp
division.dmp
gencode.dmp
merged.dmp
names.dmp
nodes.dmp
readme.txt

The readme.txt file gives a brief description of *.dmp files. These files
contain taxonomic information and are briefly described below. Each of the
files store one record in the single line that are delimited by "\t|\n"
(tab, vertical bar, and newline) characters. Each record consists of one 
or more fields delimited by "\t|\t" (tab, vertical bar, and tab) characters.
The brief description of field position and meaning for each file follows.

nodes.dmp
---------

This file represents taxonomy nodes. The description for each node includes 
the following fields:

	tax_id					-- node id in GenBank taxonomy database
 	parent tax_id				-- parent node id in GenBank taxonomy database
 	rank					-- rank of this node (superkingdom, kingdom, ...) 
 	embl code				-- locus-name prefix; not unique
 	division id				-- see division.dmp file
 	inherited div flag  (1 or 0)		-- 1 if node inherits division from parent
 	genetic code id				-- see gencode.dmp file
 	inherited GC  flag  (1 or 0)		-- 1 if node inherits genetic code from parent
 	mitochondrial genetic code id		-- see gencode.dmp file
 	inherited MGC flag  (1 or 0)		-- 1 if node inherits mitochondrial gencode from parent
 	GenBank hidden flag (1 or 0)            -- 1 if name is suppressed in GenBank entry lineage
 	hidden subtree root flag (1 or 0)       -- 1 if this subtree has no sequence data yet
 	comments				-- free-text comments and citations

names.dmp
---------
Taxonomy names file has these fields:

	tax_id					-- the id of node associated with this name
	name_txt				-- name itself
	unique name				-- the unique variant of this name if name not unique
	name class				-- (synonym, common name, ...)

division.dmp
------------
Divisions file has these fields:
	division id				-- taxonomy database division id
	division cde				-- GenBank division code (three characters)
	division name				-- e.g. BCT, PLN, VRT, MAM, PRI...
	comments

gencode.dmp
-----------
Genetic codes file:

	genetic code id				-- GenBank genetic code id
	abbreviation				-- genetic code name abbreviation
	name					-- genetic code name
	cde					-- translation table for this genetic code
	starts					-- start codons for this genetic code

delnodes.dmp
------------
Deleted nodes (nodes that existed but were deleted) file field:

	tax_id					-- deleted node id

merged.dmp
----------
Merged nodes file fields:

	old_tax_id                              -- id of nodes which has been merged
	new_tax_id                              -- id of nodes which is result of merging