Deck John, Gaither Michelle R, Ewing Rodney, Bird Christopher E, Davies Neil, Meyer Christopher, Riginos Cynthia, Toonen Robert J, Crandall Eric D
Berkeley Natural History Museums, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawaii, Kaneohe, Hawaii, United States of America.
PLoS Biol. 2017 Aug 3;15(8):e2002925. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2002925. eCollection 2017 Aug.
The Genomic Observatories Metadatabase (GeOMe, http://www.geome-db.org/) is an open access repository for geographic and ecological metadata associated with biosamples and genetic data. Whereas public databases have served as vital repositories for nucleotide sequences, they do not accession all the metadata required for ecological or evolutionary analyses. GeOMe fills this need, providing a user-friendly, web-based interface for both data contributors and data recipients. The interface allows data contributors to create a customized yet standard-compliant spreadsheet that captures the temporal and geospatial context of each biosample. These metadata are then validated and permanently linked to archived genetic data stored in the National Center for Biotechnology Information's (NCBI's) Sequence Read Archive (SRA) via unique persistent identifiers. By linking ecologically and evolutionarily relevant metadata with publicly archived sequence data in a structured manner, GeOMe sets a gold standard for data management in biodiversity science.
