Earth Microbiome Project Ontology (EMPO)

Qiita supports using the EMPO classification of samples as it provides and easy way to group samples and has resulted extremely helpful for meta-analyses and searching and finding similar samples in the database.

The current version can be found here: Making data Public in Qiita and/or send data to EBI-ENA and below you can find older version, for your reference.

EMPO 1 (first release)

empo_1	empo_2	empo_3	Examples
Free-living	Non-saline	Water (non-saline)	fresh water from lake, pond, or river (<5 psu)
Free-living	Non-saline	Sediment (non-saline)	sediment from lake, pond, or river (<5 psu)
Free-living	Non-saline	Soil (non-saline)	soil from forest, grassland, tundra, desert, etc.
Free-living	Non-saline	Surface (non-saline)	biofilm from wet (<5 psu) or dry surface, wood, dust, or microbial mat
Free-living	Non-saline	Subsurface (non-saline)	deep or subsurface environment
Free-living	Non-saline	Aerosol (non-saline)	aerosolized dust or liquid
Free-living	Saline	Water (saline)	salt water from ocean, sea, estuary, mangrove, or coral reef (>5 psu)
Free-living	Saline	Sediment (saline)	sediment from ocean, sea, estuary, mangrove, or beach (>5 psu)
Free-living	Saline	Hypersaline (saline)	water from hypersaline sample or brine (>50 psu)
Free-living	Saline	Surface (saline)	biofilm from wet or underwater surface or microbial mat (>5 psu)
Free-living	Saline	Aerosol (saline)	seaspray or other aerosolized saline material (>5 psu)
Host-associated	Animal-associated	Animal distal gut	feces, stool
Host-associated	Animal-associated	Animal proximal gut	digesta
Host-associated	Animal-associated	Animal secretion	gut intestine, gizzard, crop, lumen, or mucosa
Host-associated	Animal-associated	Animal surface	skin, sebum, mucus, slime
Host-associated	Animal-associated	Animal corpus	tissue of sponge, coral, gill, siphon, carcass, etc. or whole small animal
Host-associated	Fungus-associated	Fungus corpus	tissue of mushroom or other fungi
Host-associated	Fungus-associated	Fungus surface	biofilm of mushroom
Host-associated	Plant-associated	Plant secretion	pollen or sap
Host-associated	Plant-associated	Plant surface	leaf or kelp surface biofilm
Host-associated	Plant-associated	Plant rhizosphere	plant root system, may include some soil
Host-associated	Plant-associated	Plant corpus	tissue of leaf, stem, fruit, or algae
Control	Negative	Sterile water blank	sterile water blank used as negative control for extraction, PCR, and sequencing
Control	Positive	Mock community	known mixed community used as positive control
Control	Positive	Single strain	known single strain control culture
Unknown	Contradictory	Unknown (contradictory)	unknown sample type because other metadata is contradictory
Unknown	Missing	Unknown (missing)	unknown sample type because metadata is unavailable