18S metagenomic sequencing of DNA isolated from salt marsh sediments of varying salinities from coastal Louisiana, 2018-07-13 to 2018-07-27

DNA was extracted from soil marsh samples collected from different salinity zones in coastal Louisiana between 2018-07-13 to 2018-07-27, following a processing step to separate the organic matter from the sediment. For this process, sediment was flushed through a 500 μm sieve onto a 45 μm sieve. The material retained on the 45 μm sieve was then mixed with Ludox (a coloidal silica solution) and centrifuged at 15 minutes at 4500 rpm. The supernatant (organic material) was rinsed of the Ludox and then subjected to the DNA extraction and amplification process using the forward primer Illumina_Euk_1391f (Amaral-Zettler et al. 2009) and reverse primer Illumina_EukBr (Stoeck et al. 2010). Following amplification the DNA was sequenced on an Illumina Hiseq 2500 platform. Sequences of the 18SrRNA genes were submitted to GenBank and links to the submissions will be provided along with the date, geospatial location of collections and chemical analysis data.