If you select the assay in an investigation or arrive at any other Assay Details page through a search, you can visualize the assay's file structure and filter on any field.
You can also select multiple objects to visualize and filter within a single investigation. For instructions, refer to Selecting Multiple Objects.
To visualize and select assay data
- Open an Assay Details page.
In the Visualize and Select area, click one of the entities that has a filter icon. Note that the width of some visualizations require you to scroll by clicking the arrows at the bottom of the page.
Assay Hierarchy
The hierarchy of entities for assays according to the ISA-Tab standard is as follows, from less granular to more granular:
Sample > Protocol > Data File
For example, click the sample. Metadata for the sample appears.
Follow this same procedure if you want to filter on protocol instead of sample.
- From the Sample Name list, click the arrow to open the list of values. Each value is a Sample Name from the assay file. The screenshots in this page reflect an assay file named a_001.txt.
Click one or more values in the list to select them. To select multiple values, click one, wait for it to appear on the Metadata for Sample page, and then click the arrow again to select another value. To clear a selection, click that value again.
Some entities do not have associated metadata fields on which you can filter the study or assay. In that case, when you click the icon for that entity, you see a message letting you know that no metadata fields are available.
- Click Filter Results. The Sample Count reduces from the original values in the unfiltered assay file, to the values selected in this procedure. The screenshots in this page reflect three values in the unfiltered assay and then two values in the filtered assay.
- At this point, you can choose one of the following options:
- Continue to explore this data set.
- Download the metadata of the three values you selected. For instructions, refer to Downloading Selected Metadata.
- Download the selected data of the three values you selected (which includes the metadata). For instructions, refer to Downloading Selected Data to Your Computer.
- Click Clear Filters to filter a different entity.
