Quick Start Guide
Video Tutorial
1. Registering an Account

An introduction to the BOLD Student Data Portal website. This video provides an overview of the system and describes how to register and create a course.
2. Submitting Data

This video follows the submission of a DNA barcode record from the specimen data all the way to the sequence. It focuses on the student interface, but it allows instructors to follow the steps students will need to undertake in order to create their records.
3. Overseeing a course

This video provides an overview of the tools available to instructors to monitor student work and participation. It also describes the steps needed in validating and approving student-generated data for publication on BOLD and GenBank.
 

View Data and Download Data

Students logged in to BOLD-UNI will be able to view and download all the data submitted by their coursemates. This is useful for comparing records and performing various types of sequence analysis.

Main Student Console
Main Console Figure 4-8: Main Student Console with the View and Download Data buttons available on the right side of the screen. The View Data button allows students to access the records submitted by themselves and their coursemates. The download tools allow students to download the course specimen records, trace files, and sequence data.

The download tools provide the following files:

  • Download Specimen Data
             Specimen Data will be downloaded in Excel format
  • Download Trace files
             Trace files will be downloaded to a folder containing each trace file in .ab1 format and a list of trace
              files in .txt format.
  • Download Sequences
             Sequences will be downloaded as FASTA files.

The View Data options are described below.

Record List
record list Figure 4-9: From the View Data button, students have access to the course record list. This provides a quick overview of the taxonomy, sequence lengths, and record flags for all the records in the course. Each Sample ID and Process ID are linked to a specimen page and a sequence page respectively. Analysis tools are available on the left menu, once more than 3 records have been submitted for the course.
Example Specimen Page
Specimen Page Figure 4-10: This page provides an overview of the submitted specimen data for the record including identifiers, taxonomy (if known), specimen details, specimen images, geography, and collection details. Under the Contributors section of the Specimen Details, attribution data is also displayed including a list of students and their contribution to the generation of the record. A student may annotate a record and add comments by clicking on "Add Tags and Comments" under the Annotation section. 
Example Sequence Page
Sequence Page Figure 4-11: This page displays the nucleotide sequence, amino acid sequence, illustrative barcode, raw trace files, primer information, and sequence quality for the genetic data generated from the specimen. A student may annotate a record and add comments by clicking on "Add Tags and Comments" under the Annotation section.