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NAME

Bio::MAGETAB::Material - Abstract material class

SYNOPSIS

 use Bio::MAGETAB::Material;

DESCRIPTION

This class is an abstract class from which all MAGE-TAB Material classes (Source, Sample, Extract, LabeledExtract) are derived. It cannot be instantiated directly. See Bio::MAGETAB::Node for superclass methods.

ATTRIBUTES

name (required)

The name of the material (data type: String).

materialType (optional)

The type of the material (e.g. 'whole_organism', 'organism_part', 'RNA' etc.), usually from a suitable ontology (data type: Bio::MAGETAB::ControlledTerm).

description (optional)

A free-text description of the material. In general the use of this attribute is discouraged due to the difficulty of computationally parsing natural languages (data type: String).

characteristics (optional)

A list of characteristics of the material. These may describe any aspect of the material, and should ideally be taken from an appropriate ontology (data type: Bio::MAGETAB::ControlledTerm).

measurements (optional)

A list of measurements of the material. These may describe any measurable property of the material. Units are handled by the Measurement class (data type: Bio::MAGETAB::Measurement).

METHODS

Each attribute has accessor (get_*) and mutator (set_*) methods, and also predicate (has_*) and clearer (clear_*) methods where the attribute is optional. Where an attribute represents a one-to-many relationship the mutator accepts an arrayref and the accessor returns an array.

SEE ALSO

Bio::MAGETAB::Node

AUTHOR

Tim F. Rayner <tfrayner@gmail.com>

LICENSE

This library is released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL).