“…A common example is metadata describing a collection of biological samples (i.e., a sample-metadata mapping file ), such as ISA-TAB-based file formats [1] . For example, in a human microbiome survey, this file would map unique sample identifiers [2] to descriptions of each sample for minimum information standards compliance [3] , study-specific parameters such as host identifier and disease state, and technical information such as, for marker genes, the PCR primer pair that was used to amplify and sequence the gene reading out the community profile, and, for shotgun metagenomics, the library construction protocol.…”