Microbial community composition of a lacustrine sediment sequence from Laguna Potrok Aike

Laguna Potrok Aike is a maar lake located in South Patagonia, Argentina, within the Pali Aike volcanic field. Its geographical location allows for recording of climatic variations associated with the Westerly winds and ice cap distribution in the Andes during the last glacial-interglacial transition. During the ICDP-sponsored PASADO field operations, a 93 m long sedimentary sequence (core no. 5022-1D) was collected and sampled on site for detailed geochemistry and geomicrobiology of the sediment. Using Illumina-based 16S rRNA gene profiles covering the last 51,000 years of climatic history, we investigated microbial community composition in response to both past environmental conditions and geochemical evolution of the sediment during burial and explored how the deep lacustrine biosphere is constituted after isolation from the surface and over geological time.This project was financially supported by the following institutions: the International Continent Scientific Drilling Program; Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 200020-119931/2 to D. Ariztegui); University of Bremen and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Canada; University of Buenos Aires and the Argentinean Research Council; Vetenskapsrädet of Sweden; GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.