SRA sample related sample annotation

Question

[lhhaoliu]

Folks, NCBI GEO actually provide rather detail annotation in format that you can readily obtain (with some scripting)... however, it seems the SRA repository does not really support apparent ways to get sample annotation associated with the sequencing results, anyone has looked into this and found a solution?

Thanks

Answer 1

[piet]

SRA repository does not really support apparent ways to get sample annotation associated

Every entry in SRA is associated with a Bioproject and with a Biosample. Biosamples can hold a set attributes. Attributes are free-style key/value pairs which may be used to store very detailed information about the sample.

Here is an example for a useful and informative Biosample: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/biosample/SAMN02949640

If you plan to submit sequencing data to SRA I would rather encourage you to also add meaningful attributes to the Biosample linked to your read data.