Grouping samples - issue with new sample IDs

Technical Support
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1

Hi everyone!

I'm new to the forum and I need some help with the new sample IDs of my grouped samples. I'd like to group the samples in before, during and after treatment, so I used the feature-table group plugin with the following command:

qiime feature-table group
--i-table table.qza
--p-axis 'sample'
--m-metadata-file metadata.txt
--m-metadata-column Status
--p-mode 'sum'
--o-grouped-table table_grouped.qza

I created another metadata-file with before, during and after treatment as new sample-IDs. When I try to work with the grouped table and the new metadata-file, I receive the error message 'Metadata IDs must be unique'.

Another user struggled with the same issue and the suggested solution was to remove the duplicates in the metadata (Grouping samples with 'group'). I did that but now I get another error message saying 'Detected empty metadata ID'.

Can anyone help me? Thanks in advance!

2

Hi @Sabroe,

Welcome to the :qiime2: forum!

Did you just delete the duplicate IDs in your metadata, or did you delete the IDs and their associated data? If you just deleted the IDs, you'll receive that error since you are missing identifiers with existing data in your file. I would double check that you've removed the duplicate IDs along with their data before trying again - if you still run into the same issue, can you send me your metadata file to take a look at? DM is fine if you don't want to share publicly on the forum.

Cheers :lizard:

1 Like
3

Hi @lizgehret !

Yes, I did that wrong and now it works. I just deleted the IDs without the associated data. Now that I read your message, it makes perfect sense to me that I have to delete all the data :smiley:

Thank you so much for your help! :slight_smile:

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