Amoeboid protists isolated from ancient Siberian permafrost

Permafrost, frozen ground cemented with ice, occupies about a quarter of the Earth’s hard surface and reaches up to a thousand meters depth. Due to constant negative temperatures, permafrost sediments represent a unique record of past epochs, whenever it comes to accumulated methane, oxygen isotope ratio, or stored mummies of animals. Permafrost is also a unique environment where cryptobiotic stages of different microorganisms are trapped and stored alive for up to hundreds of thousands of years. Several strains isolated from permafrost cores have been already described. Here described is the collection of strains of clonal amoeboid protists of the Soil Cryology Lab, Pushchino, as well as permafrost samples from which the strains were isolated. The dataset presented contains different core characteristics and the taxonomy of isolated strains. Specimens of the collection are available from the Soil Cryology Lab upon request. The cores are stored frozen at −18 °C and may be used for further detailed studies and isolation attempts.