Description
(1) The Material file describes the composition of the material formulation and is not included in the ISA-TAB specification. The Material file is an important file that is designed to allow for nanomaterial comparison across nanotechnology resources.
(2) An investigation typically involves the preparation of multiple materials that are tested.These materials could be of the same chemical composition (same type and amount of chemical components in the sample) or different chemical compositions. Materials of different chemical composition or physical characteristics should be described in separate Material files.
File Format
The Material file looks similar to the Study and Assay files. It is a horizontally oriented spreadsheet containing tab delimited row values representing multiple values. The Material file contains information on the material, the relationship between material constituents, and a description of the material file. An example subset of this format is provided in TABLE 1.
TABLE 1: Example Subset of the Material File Format
A | B | C | D |
|---|---|---|---|
Material Source Name | Material Name | Manufacturer Lot Identifier | Material Description |
NCL-20-1 | g4_tris_dendrimer | G4 tris(hydroxyl) terminated PAMAM dendrimer | |
NCL-20-1 | g4_tris_core |
|
A detailed example leveraging data from the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (NCL) NCL200612 is provided on the Material File Examples wiki page.
Fields
Material source name--- The unique identification name of the source from which the material sample is derived. Its value is used as the value for source name in ISA-TAB-Nano study files, thereby linking the ISA-TAB-Nano Material file and the Study file
Material name---The unique identification name for the sample and its different components. This name is used to identify or reference the different components across the ISA-TAB-Nano files.
Manufacturer lot identifier---A distinctive numeric, alpha, or alpha-numeric identification code assigned by the manufacturer or distributor. It is assigned to a specific quantity of manufactured material or product that is produced in a manner that is expected to render it homogeneous.This concept is introduced in ISA-TAB-Nano.
Material description---A textual description of the material sample.
Material synthesis---A text or a single term description of how the material was made.
Material design rationale---A text description for the underlying design rationale is the property, process or phenomenon taken into consideration when formulating a nanoparticle or other substance in order to achieve the intended use of the formulation.
Material intended application---The application for which a drug, nanoparticle or other substance is formulated and tested (e.g., MRI).
Material intended application term accession number---Identification number of a term selected from an ontology or a controlled vocabulary, if the term is entered as a value for material intended application.
Material intended application term source REF---The name which identifies the source from where the term for material intended application is selected.& This name should match one of the names entered in the terms source name field in the investigation file.
Material type---One or more terms used to classify the type of material sample. Multiple terms are entered as a semicolon-delimited list.
Material type term accession number---Identification number of a term selected from an ontology or a controlled vocabulary, if the term is entered as a value for material type.
Material type term source REF---The name which identifies the source from where the term for material type is selected. This name should match one of the names entered in the terms source name field in the investigation file.
Material chemical name---The chemical name of the material or its constituent material.
Material chemical name term accession number---Identification number of a term selected from an ontology or a controlled vocabulary, if the term is entered as a value for material chemical name.
Material chemical name term source REF---The name which identifies the source from where the term for material chemical name is selected. This name should match one of the name entered in the term source name field in the investigation file.
Characteristics--- A semicolon-delimited list of terms that describe specific attributes of the sample or its constituents.
Characteristic term accession number---Identification number of a term selected from an ontology or a controlled vocabulary, if the term is entered as a value for material characteristic.
Characteristics term source REF---The name which identifies the source from where the term for Material Characteristic is selected. This name should match one of the names entered in the terms source name field in the investigation file.
Characteristics value--- The value corresponding to a material characteristic name. For example, “single walled carbon nanotube” is the value of the characteristic name “wall type” for the material chemical name “carbon nanotube”.
Characteristics value term accession number--- Identification number of a term selected from an ontology or a controlled vocabulary, if the term is entered as a value for material characteristic value.
Characteristics value term source REF--- The name which identifies the source from where the term for material characteristic value is selected. This name should match one of the names entered in the terms source name field in the investigation file.
Unit--- The standard of measurement used if the value for material characteristic value is quantitative and dimensional.
Unit term accession number--- Identification number of a term selected from an ontology or a controlled vocabulary, if the term is entered as a value for material characteristic unit.
Unit term source REF--- The name which identifies the source from where the term for material characteristic unit is selected.
Material consitituent---The material name for each of the components of the nanoparticle sample. The names should be obtained from the entries for the “Material Name” field.
Material linkage name---A unique identification name for each of the two components (whole or part) that are linked to each other in the nanoparticle sample. The names should be obtained from the entries for the “Material Name” field. A cell must have the names of the two linked components, separated by a semicolon.
Material linkage type---The type of linkage present in a nanoparticle sample (for example, attachment, encapsulation, entrapment etc.).
Material linkage type term accession number---Identification number of a term selected from an ontology or a controlled vocabulary, if the term is entered as a value for material linkage type.
Material linkage type term source REF---The name which identifies the source from where the term for material linkage type is selected. This name should match one of the names entered in the term source name field in the investigation file.
Material data file --- The name of files (for example, Image, Structures file) containing information about the material sample. There can be only one file name per cell.
Material data file type--- The name that defines the type of the material file (e.g. image, graph).
Material data file type term accession number--- Identification number of a term selected from an ontology or a controlled vocabulary, if the term is entered as a value for material file type.
Material data file type term source REF--- The name which identifies the source from where the term for Material data file type is selected.
Material data file description--- A textual description providing additional information on the material file.
