Importing Data

Data produced by QIIME 2 exist as QIIME 2 artifacts. A QIIME 2 artifact contains data and metadata. The metadata describes things about the data, such as its type, format, and how it was generated (provenance). A QIIME 2 artifact typically has the .qza or .qzv file extension when stored in a zip file.

Since QIIME 2 works with artifacts instead of data files (e.g. FASTA files), you must create a QIIME 2 artifact by importing data. You can import data at any step in an analysis, though typically you will start by importing raw sequence data. QIIME 2 also has tools to export data from an artifact. See the  QIIME 2 Importing Guide for details on how to import data.

Note: if you are having trouble unzipping the file, you can run this line in your command line.

qiime tools extract

For more information, visit https://dev.qiime2.org/latest/storing-data/