Data from: Exploring the habitability of the outer solar system icy moons for the extremotolerant the yeast Rhodotorula frigidalcoholis

Microorganisms adapted to growing at low temperatures are ideal for studying if the icy moons of the solar system could be habitable for Earth life. These moons have been studied with past space missions and have shown to have environmental characteristics which could enable habitability under their subsurface oceans. This dataset summarizes our research using the psychrotolerant yeast Rhodotorula frigidalcoholis exposed to icy moon conditions. The yeast is an optimal candidate for such investigations as it has the ability to grow between 30 and -10°C. Here we present the survival data after the yeast was exposed to the icy moon conditions. These consisted of 7 days of desiccation, 750 Gy of X-ray radiation and 7500 J/m-2 of polychromatic UV radiation combined. The RNA was isolated and sequenced from the yeast prior to, during and after exposure to the icy moon conditions. Sequenced data in this dataset consists of primary (differential expression analysis) and secondary significant known differentiallly expressed genes (DEGs). Data analysis consisted of principal component analysis (PCA) plots generated through the normalization and standardization of the data to the gene expression levels, volcano plots of identified DEGs using the log2fold change on the x-axis and the log10 adjusted p-value on the y-axis. DEGs were separated in cluster of ortholog groups (COGs) using the NCBI database, and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed using the DEGs in the FungiFun3 online tool. The data analysis and figure generation was performed using Microsoft Excel and Matplotlib. The data visulization through figure generation was performed by using the Seaborn data visualization library interface for Matplotlib. Our research help us improve our understanding of how such microorganisms could survive on the icy moons in order to understand habitability but also to guide planetary protection.