Sample metadata

Metadata fields

The table below shows the fields that can be specified for each sample. An asterisk indicates the fields that are required in submissions to FEGA Sweden.

Important

This is only for the public sample metadata. Make sure that it is not possible to identify individual people from information that you share publicly. Any sensitive information should be submitted as data.

Field name Description
Alias* The submitter’s designated name for the sample. The name must be unique within the submission account.
Title A short informative description of the sample
Description A longer description of sample and how it differs from other samples
Subject ID* An identifier for subject or donor of the sample
BioSampleID BioSampleID if relevant
Case or control “case”, “control”, “both” or “NA”
Gender* “female”, “male” or “unknown”
Organism part Part of organism
Cell line Cell line
Region Geographic region
Phenotype* Phenotype or disease state relevant for using the data

FEGA Sweden recommends using the Experimental Factor Ontology Database for describing your sample phenotypes. Whenever applicable, we also recommend using appropriate INSDC terms for missing values.

Sample metadata templates

Templates for sample metadata are available in the following formats:

File format Download Description
Text CSV sample-metadata.csv Plain text template without validation
ODF Spreadsheet sample-metadata.ods LibreOffice spreadsheet with validation
Office Open XML Spreadsheet sample-metadata.xlsx Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with validation