You have seen in previous tutorials how you can enter comments in association with objects in the construct window. This tutorial demonstrates how you can search comments in a construct for a specific piece of information. Given that you may have many generations in a construct, it might sometimes be difficult not only to remember where in a construct you have stored information, but in which file the information was stored. This can be done using the File Searching capability of GCK, which is not available in the demo version of the program.

1. Start GCK and open the file pBR322 in the tutorial files folder. You know that there is an origin of replication in this vector but it is not currently visible, nor can you remember with which generation it is associated. You can identify the location of this feature by using the Search Comments function.

2. Choose Construct > Search Comments... and type the word 'origin' into the Key Text field and press Search. This search examines all comments and names for the key work 'origin'. You can limit your search to just specific features by using the checkboxes on the left of the dialog box.

3. The list that appears in the right of the figure contains all those features which have the word 'origin' in their names or in their comments. Click on the word 'origin' in the right side list and press Show Info to see the context of the match. You will see the standard region 'get info' box with the word 'origin' highlighted in the Region Comments field. From this dialog, you know that the origin of replication is from 2484 to 2723 and is a region in generation#1 (as indicated in the bottom left corner of the dialog).