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BIOL 448 Principles of Neurobiology

Unlock your research superpowers! Level up your research skills and boost your success in class with expert tips, top-notch resources, and game-changing strategies.

Use the AND, OR operators and Truncation*

Searching PubMed

Use the operator AND in all caps between each of the terms or phrases you want to find in the materials you are searching for, and use double quotation marks " " around phrases that are two or more words.

Keyword search in PubMed is Brain AND "Sexual Differentiation" AND gene. The operator AND, in all caps is used between each of the terms and phrase you are searching for. Double quotation marks are used around phrase that are two or more words.

Operators: AND, OR, and Truncation

  • Use of AND between the keywords or phrases to return results that contain all of those keywords.
  • Use OR between synonyms or alternate terms or phrases.
  • Use of the asterick at the end of truncated terms to search for the root of the word and any possible variations in spelling or tense of the word.

The keyword search is Brain AND ("sexual differentiation" OR "Sexual dimorph*") AND gene. The use of AND between the keywords or phrases searches the database for each term. The use of OR searches the database for one or the other terms or phrases but both are not required to be returned in the search results. The use of the asterick at the truncated term searches for the root of the word and any possible variations in spelling or tense of the word.

Gene Database

Gene Database

Locate associated gene(s) by searching for traits, characteristics, conditions, or phenotypes.

In this sample search the term dimorphic, or dimorphism is truncatated to include only the root of the word (dimorph*), then followed by an aterick*. This search technique is used to search for variations of spelling and tense for the keywords you need to find.

brain dimorph* is a keyword search strategy in which the term dimorphism is truncated at the root of the word followed by an asterisk. Truncation searches the databases for variations of the term, in this case, dimorphism, or dimorphic.

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