ISA API

ISA API provides programmatic creation, parsing, validation, and conversion of ISA-Tab and ISA-JSON experimental metadata to standardize Investigation, Study, and Assay descriptions for management and exchange in life sciences research.

Key Features:

• Creation and Manipulation: Creates, edits, parses, and validates ISA-Tab and ISA-JSON serializations organized around Investigation, Study, and Assay components.
• Common Data Model: Implements a common data model as Python object classes to enable conversion and validation between ISA serializations and interoperability with other life-science data formats for public database deposition.
• Programmatic Accessibility: Exposes a programmatic interface to automate metadata handling and to bridge ISA-Tab and ISA-JSON within computational workflows.

Scientific Applications:

• Metadata standardization and exchange: Enables standardized representation and exchange of experimental metadata including sample characteristics, technology types, measurement methodologies, and sample-to-data relationships.
• Reproducibility and reuse: Facilitates reproducible and reusable experimental records by enforcing structured metadata and validation.
• Repository deposition compatibility: Supports interoperability with public repositories and schemas such as the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) for dataset deposition.

Methodology:

Implements a Python-based common data model composed of Python object classes and provides functions to create, edit, parse, validate, and convert ISA-Tab and ISA-JSON, with compatibility considerations for schemas such as the Sequence Read Archive (SRA).