Definitions for "Wildcard character"
dictyBase uses an asterisk "*" as a wildcard symbol. In a search, the wildcard character shows where any text can be tolerated. For example, searching for the locus "cdc*" will produce all cdc genes. Searching for the Author "Johns*" will produce all authors whose last name begins with those letters. Since the database requires exact matches to its format for searches to be productive, wise use of the "*" wildcard character is needed for many types of searches.
a character which has special meaning
a character you can type from the keyboard that will stand for one or more typed characters