Load an Uniprot GFF directly to a pandas.DataFrame

fetch_uniprot_gff.py

from urlparse import parse_qs

import pandas as pd

def _fetch_uniprot_gff(identifier):
    """
    Retrieve UniProt data from the GFF file

    :param identifier: UniProt accession identifier
    :type identifier: str
    :return: table
    :return type: pandas.DataFrame
    """
    url = defaults.api_uniprot + identifier + ".gff"
    cols = "NAME SOURCE TYPE START END SCORE STRAND FRAME GROUP empty".split()

    data = pd.read_table(url, skiprows=2, names=cols)
    groups = data.GROUP.apply(parse_qs)
    groups = pd.DataFrame.from_records(groups)
    data = data.merge(groups, left_index=True, right_index=True)

    return data