Dear Kevin,
Thank you for using the UCSC Genome Browser and your question about possible differences between the Table Browser and downloadable files.
You are correct there are can be differences between the two, but there should be a delay of only about a week between the data that is available on the Table Browser and the data that is updated on the hgdownload server and our public MySQL server. Each Sunday there is an automatic rsync of the current MySQL data available through the Table Browser to our hgdownload server, which is then also copied nightly to our public genome-mysql server.
Please note that since the MySQL data on our site available through the Table Browser can be constantly updating, by the day following the weekend rsync has occurred, new additional information could have been added. For example, you should not see the same differences between the two locations after 8 days around a specific gene, unless even newer annotation differences have been added. If you do see persistent differences over a prolonged time, please do bring the specific example to our attention with dates of access.
Thank you again for your inquiry and using the UCSC Genome Browser. If you have any further questions, please reply
toge...@soe.ucsc.edu. All messages sent to that address are archived on a publicly-accessible forum. If your question includes sensitive data, you may send it instead to
genom...@soe.ucsc.edu.
All the best,
Brian Lee
UCSC Genomics Institute