Dfam Search Families

Overview

Search Dfam for transposable element (TE) / repeat element families by name prefix, taxonomic clade, or repeat type. Dfam is the authoritative database of repetitive DNA, including SINEs (Alu), LINEs (L1), DNA transposons, LTR retrotransposons, and satellites. Returns family accession, name, length, classification, and repeat type. Useful for identifying repeat families in a genome or studying transposon evolution. Example: searching name_prefix='AluS' returns Alu SINE subfamilies (AluSc, AluSx, etc.) found in primates; clade=9606 with repeat_type='SINE' returns human-specific SINEs.

Status

The most recent probe succeeded. Safe to call from the agent today.

Last probed

1d ago

Last success

1d ago

Last latency

620ms

Schema

JSON Schema the agent (or your API call) must match.

{
  "properties": {
    "clade": {
      "description": "Taxonomic clade filter as NCBI taxon ID (e.g., '9606' for human, '40674' for Mammalia, '7227' for Drosophila).",
      "type": "string"
    },
    "limit": {
      "description": "Maximum number of results (default 20, max 50).",
      "type": "integer"
    },
    "name_prefix": {
      "description": "TE family name prefix to search (e.g., 'AluS', 'L1M', 'SVA', 'MER'). Case-sensitive.",
      "type": "string"
    },
    "repeat_type": {
      "description": "Repeat type filter. Options: 'SINE', 'LINE', 'LTR', 'DNA', 'Satellite', 'RC', 'Other'.",
      "type": "string"
    }
  },
  "required": [],
  "type": "object"
}

Examples (1)

{
  "limit": 3
}

Identifiers

Catalog ID

tu_Dfam_search_families

Tool name

Dfam_search_families

Added

2026-05-01 00:58Z

Tags

tooluniverse