UniBind TF Binding Sites (Claude Skill)

Query UniBind for experimentally validated, ChIP-seq-derived transcription-factor binding sites and download their coordinates for local analysis.

   
Type Claude Skill
Supplier Google DeepMind
Availability GA
Pricing Free / OSS skill (Apache-2.0 code, CC-BY-4.0 docs); UniBind API is public, no key
Capabilities Read-only — Claude runs the skill’s Python locally (uv run) against the UniBind REST API
Verified degraded · 2026-07-29 — dir resolves; prior-run fix of a stale scienceskillscommon copy line stands
Security cleared · 2026-07-29 — provenance matches google-deepmind, Apache-2.0, maintained, keyless public API, no OSV advisories

How to install

The google-deepmind/science-skills collection follows the Agent Skills SKILL.md spec. The repo’s primary npx skills add path targets Gemini/Antigravity; for Claude the followable path is a manual copy of the skill directory.

  • Claude Code / Claude Desktop — clone and copy the skill into your skills directory: 
    git clone https://github.com/google-deepmind/science-skills
cp -r science-skills/skills/unibind_database ~/.claude/skills/
cp -r science-skills/skills/uv ~/.claude/skills/

    (The SKILL.md requires the bundled uv skill for its setup — copy it too.)

  • Prerequisite — the skill runs its Python helpers via uv run; install uv first if absent: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh. jq is recommended for parsing large JSON responses. Python deps install into an isolated environment on first run.

What it does

Wraps the UniBind REST API — a curated repository of direct TF–DNA interactions across 9 species, integrating ChIP-seq peaks with JASPAR profiles via the DAMO framework:

  • List species, collections, cell lines, and transcription factors
  • Filter/retrieve datasets by organism, TF name, cell line, or data source
  • Download binding-site coordinates in BED or FASTA
  • Retrieve dataset metadata

It is for dataset discovery and bulk coordinate download, not for querying specific intervals, genes, or motif models.

Primary use cases: retrieving validated TF binding-site sets, downstream peak/enrichment analysis, building TF-regulation datasets.

Notes

Claude Science: This resource is offered inside Anthropic’s Claude Science via the Regulation featured connector. Its inclusion there is an independent signal of quality and trustworthiness for life-science research.

No API key required, but users must review the UniBind terms at unibind.uio.no before use. Complements the catalogued JASPAR skill (jaspar-database.md), which provides the motif models UniBind integrates. The npx skills add google-deepmind/science-skills/ command documented upstream is oriented at Gemini/Antigravity (it writes to ~/.gemini/config/skills/); for Claude, the manual copy into ~/.claude/skills/ shown above is the equivalent path.

Sources

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