NDVI Fluctuations in Alpine River Regulate Top-down Control of the Microbial Community Assembly and Potential Function on the Tibetan Plateau

The community structure and functional potential of planktonic microbiomes in water and benthic microbiomes in alpine riparian sediments were analyzed under two distinct normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) fluctuation conditions on the Tibetan Plateau, using high-throughput sequencing and a CNPS gene chip. 

NDVI values were extracted from the 2023 monthly average dataset (https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov). This method was also applied to extract temperature and precipitation data (https://www.geodata.cn/data). The site information data is saved in a CSV file named Site information.csv.

Environmental parameters, including pH, electrical conductivity (EC, μS/cm), oxidation-reduction potential (ORP, mv), pressure (mmHg), dissolved oxygen (DO, mg/L), and water temperature (WT, °C), dissolved total nitrogen (TN, mg/L), dissolved total carbon (TC, mg/L), dissolved total organic carbon (TOC, mg/L), TIC (TIC, mg/L), and dissolved total phosphorus (TP, mg/L). In addition, the sediment was lyophilized, ground, and then used for the analysis of total carbon (STC, mg/g), total organic carbon (STOC, mg/g), total nitrogen (STN, mg/g), total phosphorus (STP, mg/g), available phosphorus (SAP, mg/g), and dissolved total sulfur (STS, mg/g). The water content (WC, %). The environmental parameters data is saved in a CSV file named Environmental parameters.csv.

DNA was extracted from 180 samples (90 water and 90 sediment). Seventy-one functional genes, carbon (C), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and sulfur (S) cycling, were analyzed by high-throughput qPCR on a Wafergen Smart Chip Real-Time qPCR platform. The data is saved in a CSV file named Functional gene abundance.csv.