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 the Node class 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.

AUTHOR

Tim F. Rayner <tfrayner@gmail.com>

LICENSE

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