creating a dictonary in Python

Question

From the FASTA header I get the following information:

gi|1543850138|ref|NC_040192.1| Desmodium mottle virus isolate UG5 segment DNA-B, complete sequence
['gi', '1543850138', 'ref', 'NC_040192.1', ' Desmodium mottle virus isolate UG5 segment DNA-B, complete sequence']

Is there a better way to create a dictonary as I did with the below script?

from Bio import SeqIO

organismInfo = {}
for seq_record in SeqIO.parse("data/landplantsviruses.fasta","fasta"):
    print(seq_record.description)
    temp = seq_record.description.split('|')
    print(temp)
    organismID = temp[3]
    organismName = temp[4].lstrip()
    print(organismID, organismName)
    organismInfo[organismID] = organismName
print(organismInfo)
```

Answer 1

You may notice that Uniprot and NCBI have different standard: so your solution is not universal, which is why BioPython does not split the description for you —it could know different 'dialects' of fasta files but that is a tedious minefield.

About coding, one write something in a code golf format, but this is problematic as it is hard to interpret and adapt, i.e. it's a bad practice. Having said that if made a list of keys you could use zip with your list of elements as the list of keys may be more intelligible.

header = 'gi|1543850138|ref|NC_040192.1| Desmodium mottle virus isolate UG5 segment DNA-B, complete sequence'
keys = 'db|id|type|id2|wordy.'.split('|')
organism_info = dict( zip(keys, map(str.strip, header.split('|')) ))

Also, for variables in Python, camel case is for Classes, not instances. Even if you have to send data to JS, using a constistent style, i.e. the PIP guideline one, avoids errors.