Barkley Canyon sediment V9 18S rRNA metabarcoding Raw sequence reads

Sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) from marine sediments provides powerful insights into past ocean biodiversity through ecosystem reconstructions. However, the potential effects of routine X-radiography on sedaDNA sequencing outcomes remain poorly understood. This dataset presents a comparative study assessing the impact of 2D X-ray imaging on V9 18S rRNA metabarcoding outcomes. Parallel sub-samples were analyzed from three depths of a deep-sea core collected from Barkley Canyon (core ID: 2022002PGC_STN59; 1,988 m water depth, latitude 48.12, longitude -126.29). Sediment ages range from approximately 319 to 1,131 calibrated years before present. In addition to evaluating X-ray exposure effects, the dataset compares two DNA extraction approaches: the QIAGEN PowerSoil Pro kit and a high-volume cold-spin method (Murchie et al., 2021).