PEPhub: a database, web interface, and API for editing, sharing, and validating biological sample metadata.

BACKGROUND: As biological data increase, we need additional infrastructure to share them and promote interoperability. While major effort has been put into sharing data, relatively less emphasis is placed on sharing metadata. Yet, sharing metadata is also important and in some ways has a wider scope than sharing data themselves. RESULTS: Here, we present PEPhub, an approach to improve sharing and interoperability of biological metadata. PEPhub provides an API, natural-language search, and user-friendly web-based sharing and editing of sample metadata tables. We used PEPhub to process more than 100,000 published biological research projects and index them with fast semantic natural-language search. PEPhub thus provides a fast and user-friendly way to finding existing biological research data or to share new data. AVAILABILITY: https://pephub.databio.org.

PEPhub: a database, web interface, and API for editing, sharing, and validating biological sample metadata.

Background: As biological data increases, we need additional infrastructure to share it and promote interoperability. While major effort has been put into sharing data, relatively less emphasis is placed on sharing metadata. Yet, sharing metadata is also important, and in some ways has a wider scope than sharing data itself. Results: Here, we present PEPhub, an approach to improve sharing and interoperability of biological metadata. PEPhub provides an API, natural language search, and user-friendly web-based sharing and editing of sample metadata tables. We used PEPhub to process more than 100,000 published biological research projects and index them with fast semantic natural language search. PEPhub thus provides a fast and user-friendly way to finding existing biological research data, or to share new data. Availability: https://pephub.databio.org.

GEOfetch: a command-line tool for downloading data and standardized metadata from GEO and SRA.

MOTIVATION: The Gene Expression Omnibus has become an important source of biological data for secondary analysis. However, there is no simple, programmatic way to download data and metadata from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) in a standardized annotation format. RESULTS: To address this, we present GEOfetch-a command-line tool that downloads and organizes data and metadata from GEO and SRA. GEOfetch formats the downloaded metadata as a Portable Encapsulated Project, providing universal format for the reanalysis of public data. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: GEOfetch is available on Bioconda and the Python Package Index (PyPI).