BIOM format can contain tabular data ?

Question

[chemokine-1]

Hey dear community,

I downloaded from ibdmdb website Metabolomics(MBX) of HMP2, it is a biom format. Is the biom format file can be opened to tabular data? when each row and col are the metabolites and the IDs? If not, how do we read biom format?

metabo <- read_biom("HMP2_metabolomics.biom")
> metabo
biom object. 
type: Metabolite table 
matrix_type: sparse 
81867 rows and 546 columns 
> metabo$columns[[1]][[1]]
[1] "HSM5FZBJ"
> metabo$rows[[1]][[1]]
[1] "C18n_QI06"

Thanks in advance.