BIOL 1306 - General Biology (Diego Reyes): Research Process

MeSH terms are a controlled vocubulary used to catalog and index the article records in PubMed. They are arranged into tree structures and are updated every year to include new developments. These term are also useful to create your search strategy for information retrieval. You can think of MeSH terms as tags on an article. When an article is indexed for MEDLINE, an indexer at the National Library of Medicine applies these tags to indicate the primary subjects of the article. Each indexed article has a set of MeSH terms that describe the content of the citation.

Although MeSH terms can be used in PubMed searches, they are found in their own database.  This database is similar to searching PubMed but keep in mind that:

• You are not searching article records, only subject headings.
• The search history in the MeSH database is distinct from the search history in PubMed.

To search MeSH, click on MeSH Database under Explore on near the bottom of the PubMed main page.

The National Library of Medicine has produced a short video on MeSH Click here to view. 

Listed below are  some key search terms for you to use when searching for resources about your biology assignment for Biomphalaria fresh-water Snail and Schistosomiasis:

• biomphalaria

• “biomphalaria glabrata”

• “disease vectors”

• DNA

• genetics

• “immune system”

• infections

• “infectious diseases"

• ”living orgnisms"

• parasites

• parasitology

• pathogenicity

• proteins

• “schistosoma mansoni”

• schistosomiasis

• snails

• “vector borne”

• “vector borne diseases”