Data handling

How long will my raw sequencing data be stored?

We do not offer long-term storage of your data. If you sequence at the Next Generation Sequencing Platform of the University of Bern, you will receive detailed instructions for downloading your raw data by email as soon as your sequencing run and sample demultiplexing are complete. Your raw data will be available for download for a period of 6 months. It is your responsibility to download all files within this time window and to ensure you have a local copy. IBU takes no liability for any data loss.

How long will my analysis results be stored by IBU?

Depending on the total file size, we will deliver your analysis results through our OpenProjects project management system, Campus Cloud or an FTP server. Make sure that you download all files within 30 days of receiving the download links. We strongly advise you to save a local copy of all files. Please note that a fee may be applied for re-uploading delivered analyses past the download deadline.

How can I download my data from LIMS?

Please download below a helpful tutorial.

How can I import a tab- or comma-delimited text file into Excel?

Depending on the analysis, we may send you tab- or comma-delimited text file which you can open with a text editor of your choice, for example Notepad++. You can also import these files into Excel. Detailed instructions on how to import a comma-delimited text file can be found here. The principle is exactly the same for tab-delimited files. Just select tab instead of comma as the delimiter.

It is critically important that columns containing gene symbols are imported as text to make sure Excel does not convert any of the symbols to dates! For more details on this issue, check out this paper.

How can I submit data to the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA)?

Please download below the ENA submission tutorial for step by step instructions on how to submit your fastq files.

How can I compute md5 checksums?

Please check out the tutorial below to learn how you can compute md5 checksums on Linux, Mac or Windows. md5 sums are useful to check the integrity of large files after copying. They are required, for example, when uploading NGS data files to the European Nucleotide Archive.