How to pull metadata from SRA based on BioSample ID

I have a list of over 8,000 BioSample IDs in a text file and I want to use this list to pull specific information on associated sequencing runs from the SRA database. The code I'm using does work, but it's very, very slow. Is there a faster way to do this using entrez-direct? Am I just missing something very obvious? Any help would be very much appreciated!

# an example biosample list
echo "SAMN14390563
SAMN14390566
SAMN14390576
SAMN14390578
SAMN14453547
SAMN14453553" > biosamples.txt

# pull SRA info based on example biosample list
cat biosamples.txt | xargs -n 1 sh -c 'esearch -db sra -query "$0 [BSPL]" | \
join-into-groups-of 20 | \
efetch -db sra -format runinfo -mode xml | \
xtract -pattern Row -def "NA" -element Run spots bases spots_with_mates avgLength \
size_MB download_path Experiment LibraryStrategy LibrarySelection LibrarySource \
LibraryLayout InsertSize InsertDev Platform Model SRAStudy BioProject ProjectID \
Sample BioSample SampleType TaxID ScientificName SampleName CenterName \
Submission Consent > metadata_sra.txt'

ncbi entrez-direct

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updated 6.1 years ago by vkkodali_ncbi

• written 6.1 years ago by millere •

1 answer

You may want to try epost as follows:

$ cat samples.txt 
SAMN14390563
SAMN14390566
SAMN14390576
SAMN14390578
SAMN14453547
SAMN14453553
$ epost -db biosample -input samples.txt -format acc | \
elink -target sra | \
efetch -db sra -format runinfo -mode xml | \
xtract -pattern Row -def "NA" -element Run spots bases spots_with_mates avgLength \
size_MB download_path Experiment LibraryStrategy LibrarySelection LibrarySource \
LibraryLayout InsertSize InsertDev Platform Model SRAStudy BioProject ProjectID \
Sample BioSample SampleType TaxID ScientificName SampleName CenterName \
Submission Consent > metadata_sra.txt

This skips the esearch step run once for every single accession. Note, epost has some limits on the number of accessions you can provide at a time. To circumvent this, Entrez Direct comes with a built in function called join-into-groups-of that can be used here. You can read more about it here -- look for it under the group "Processing in Groups".

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written 6.1 years ago by vkkodali_ncbi

This is SO much faster! Thank you! Making use of the join-into-groups-of function, I ended up with the following command:

cat biosamples.txt | \
join-into-groups-of 500 | \
xargs -n 1 sh -c 'epost -db biosample -id "$0" -format acc | \
elink -target sra |  \
efetch -db sra -format runinfo -mode xml | \
xtract -pattern Row -def "NA" -element Run spots bases spots_with_mates avgLength \
size_MB download_path Experiment LibraryStrategy LibrarySelection LibrarySource \
LibraryLayout InsertSize InsertDev Platform Model SRAStudy BioProject ProjectID \
Sample BioSample SampleType TaxID ScientificName SampleName CenterName \
Submission Consent >> metadata_sra.txt'

Whereas my original command was taking 4+ hours to run, this does the same thing in just a few minutes!

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written 6.1 years ago by millere •