Plugin error from deblur: Deblur cannot operate on sample IDs that contain underscores

[Sam_Ola]

I read that I might need to rename the files and reinstall with manifest or perform deblur outside qiime2. I would happy to get a detailed step on how to rectify this error as I am new to qiime.

QIIME 2 Version: qiime2-2023.7 in conda environment

Command ran:
qiime deblur denoise-16S
--i-demultiplexed-seqs reads_qza/reads_trimmed_joined_filt.qza
--p-trim-length -1
--p-sample-stats
--p-jobs-to-start $NCORES
--p-min-reads 1
--output-dir deblur_output

Error message:
Plugin error from deblur:

Deblur cannot operate on sample IDs that contain underscores. The following ID(s) contain one or more underscores: SampleBD0_1, SampleBD0_2, SampleBD0_4, SampleBD0_5, SampleBD0_6, SampleBD1_2, SampleBD1_3, SampleBD1_4, SampleBD1_5, SampleBD1_6, SampleBD3_2, SampleBD3_3, SampleBD3_4, SampleBD3_5, SampleBD3_6, SampleBD5_1, SampleBD5_2, SampleBD5_3, SampleBD5_4, SampleBD5_5, SampleBD5_6, SampleBD7_1, SampleBD7_2, SampleBD7_3, SampleBD7_4, SampleBD7_5, SampleBD7_6, SampleBD9_1, SampleBD9_3, SampleBD9_6, SampleTD0_1, SampleTD0_2, SampleTD0_4, SampleTD0_5, SampleTD0_6, SampleTD1_1, SampleTD1_2, SampleTD1_3, SampleTD1_4, SampleTD1_6, SampleTD3_2, SampleTD3_3, SampleTD3_4, SampleTD3_5, SampleTD3_6, SampleTD5_2, SampleTD5_3, SampleTD5_4, SampleTD5_5, SampleTD5_6, SampleTD7_1, SampleTD7_2, SampleTD7_3, SampleTD7_5, SampleTD7_6, SampleTD9_2, SampleTD9_3, SampleTD9_4, SampleTD9_5, SampleTD9_6.

Debug info has been saved to /var/folders/n7/v006z1mj2s917tqt3c474q_80000gn/T/qiime2-q2cli-err-xjnqex0c.log

[jphagen (Johannah Hagen)]

Hi @Sam_Ola,
Welcome to Qiime2! You are correct that your issue is the sample ID names containing underscores as it states here:

@Sam_Ola

Plugin error from deblur:

Deblur cannot operate on sample IDs that contain underscores.

From your question it seems that you were able to search the forum, often you can troubleshoot from what you find there.
StackExchange is another resource you may find helpful. I was able to find this post detailing how to replace spaces with an alternative character using pandas (in your case I would recommend replacing the "_" with "-") and this is other option using python. Either of these posts might be helpful to you but I am not sure how you are working with your data and that will determine how you replace the underscores in the names.
If you are very stuck you may be able to ask your sequencing team to replace the underscores for you.
Let me know, if you have any other questions as you work through this. I am happy to help!
-Hannah