- Course overview
- Search within this course
- What is MGnify portal?
- Why should I submit my metagenomics data to ENA?
- What type of metagenomic data can I submit to ENA?
- What are metadata and why are they so important?
- How to submit data in four separate steps
- Summary
- Quiz: Check your learning
- Your feedback
- Get help and support on submitting metagenomics data
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Providing sample metadata
Entering sample metadata starts with providing basic details which are common to all your samples (Figure 9).
Organism details
- You will then be asked for the ‘Organism details’ related to your sample(s) – this is where you will indicate that they are metagenomic samples. Use the text search box to look for the metagenome taxonomy identifier related to your sample (Figure 9). NB: this field has to be filled even if your samples are not host-associated.
- For host-associated samples, do not enter the host organism but instead use the corresponding metagenome (e.g. ‘human metagenome’ for human metagenomic samples). For non-host-associated samples, there are defined metagenomes for most cases (e.g.:’soil metagenome’, ‘marine metagenome’, ‘freshwater metagenome’, ‘air metagenome’ or simply ‘metagenome’). If you can not find a suitable metagenomic name using the drop down menu, you can see here for tips on how to find the most appropriate taxon name.
NB: To ensure metadata are consistent, drop-down menus are provided where appropriate.
Adding samples
- Once you have filled in the common metadata, click ‘Next’ to go to the samples page. You can add as many samples as you like (Figure 10). Each one will require a unique sample title. The common metadata will be automatically associated with all these samples. You can edit the attributes for a particular sample on this page by selecting the corresponding sample checkbox.
- To make this process quicker, particularly if you have a lot of samples, ENA Webin allows you to download a template of the attributes for all the samples in a tab-separated file. The file can easily be edited in software tools such as Excel and LibreOffice Calc. After filling out the metadata details, you can upload it back into ENA by clicking ‘Previous’ – this takes you back to the GSC MIxS checklist (Figure 7). Be aware that the date format may have been altered if you used Excel.
- Once you have updated the metadata for your samples, click ‘Next’ to associate your samples to your sequencing run data.
