Hi everyone, complete Filemaker noob here so I apologize if this is a remarkably stupid question (which I assume it is!)

I have a list of approximately 350,000 gene mutations that occur over multiple patient samples. We have a known gene, which these patients can be either positive or negative for. We are trying to find other genes that may be involved in a specific disease. I want to take a list of all of the genes that are found in the positive-gene patients, and eliminate that list of genes in the negative-gene group.

I envisioned doing this by searching and greating a positive gene group, omitting the duplicate finds, and then deleting all occurrences of these genes in the 'gene-negative' group.

Of course, with my limited programming and filemaker skills, I'm at a complete loss. I can get a group of positive genes, but can't figure out how to use this list to delete these genes from the "gene-negative" list.

I hope this makes some sense and if anyone can help I'd be greatly appreciative. If there is someplace else more appropriate to post this I apologize.

Thanks again,

Chris

i could start throwing out ideas but according to your profile you are using Filemaker 8? - I would have to revisit if my recommendations would work in 8.

^{Oops, Sorry, using Filemaker 11. Will update the profile. Thanks}

so in basic terms the number here is the record primary key that is unique to the gene in question.

Positive

1

1

2

3

3

5

5

7

7

Negative

1

2

2

3

3

4

6

7

To Delete/Omit from Negative Group

1

2

3

7

Result Of Negative

4

6

Are you comfortable copy & pasting custom functions? here are a few that I can recommend.

http://www.briandunning.com/cf/193

This will allow you to get a list of id's based on two return separate lists.

To get the lists you could use the List ( ) function thru a relationship however if you don't have a relationship to do that you can do it on the

found set using this function.

http://www.fmfunctions.com/functions_display_record.php?functionId=118

To remove duplicates from the generated list you can use this function

http://www.fmfunctions.com/functions_display_record.php?functionId=151

Do you really want to DELETE data / records - or just omit them from the found set?

Thank you!!! This is a great help - appreciate it