I’m still watching day 2 of the ISME19 workshop “From Reads to Function.” This session included Iyanu Oduwole, Emile Skoog, and Kent Pham. They introduced NMDC and Sample Metadata. The National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC). Iyanu Oduwole is a Genome Science and Technology Ph.D. candidate at Bredesen Center UTORII. Emilie Skoog is a postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Skoog works on understanding microbes and viruses in extreme environments. Kent Pham is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences in the University of Kentucky. NMDC aims to standardize metadata for reuse. NMDC also has a submission portal and pipeline called NMDC EDGE. Oduwole spoke about NMDC data tools and metadata forms. The Submission Portal has the goal of lowering barriers to collect, study, and analyze sample data. NMDC EDGE provides streamlined multi-omics data processing tools. However, I haven’t had success using long-reads from ONT. The Data Portal and API provide access to search and discover microbiome information. NMDC has an ambassador program focusing on data stewardship and data management. Pham spoke about metadata standards and is an NMDC Ambassador. Pham asked: what are metadata? They defined it as “contextual data about your data” that you capture in the field. Metadata is important for publication, preservation, discovery, and reuse. Pham shared the when, where, how, what of samples. In addition, the treatment applied and experimental conditions are important to capture. Pham used as an example stream data set metadata. Pham explained an activity comparing two sets of metadata that were different. Step by step, differences were reconciled. During the questions session, NMDC Ambassadors were asked if there were templates. The templates are done by environment. I learned a little more about NMDC with this session.
