How to label multi time point samples

General Discussion
1

Hi everyone,
I always have to deal with cross-sectional times points in my gut microbiota; however, now I have multi-time issues, and I run into a problem regarding how to label the samples before sending them to sequencing. Which is a suggestion/recommendation from others who work with longitudinal data on labeling before sequencing their samples when you have +2 time points if there are any?

Also, great job from the SBC showing how to use QIIME2. It is always refreshing.

Thanks all!

2

Hi @cortegas,

Have you checked out cual id before? It's a unique barcode for each of your samples that also has a version that plays nicely with the lab.

I would recommend not encoding any sample information in the name (tempting as it always is) because at some point, wires will get crossed and you'll end up getting emails from a project you worked on three years ago asking why the sample name you didn't want to go back and change doesn't match the very descriptive metadata. (Not that this oddly specific example ever happened to me. That was totally someone else.)

But, if you're going tto ignore my dire warnings, natural number (0,1,2,etc) suffixes often work. If you think you'll have more than 10, zero pad them, so like (sample1-01). But really, scan-able numeric barcodes are the way to go.

Best,
Justine

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3

Hi @jwdebelius thank you for the info.

We never used those codes at the lab, but I will take a look to the GIhub repository you sent me.

We did in the past is (this is an example and no real data):
Study ID: SBC
Time-points: Pre, post

label: SBC001PRE SBC001POST...and so on.

Thanks a lot.

It is always a great forum to ask questions.

Carmen

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