Vegetated salt marsh sediments metagenomic assembly. rhizosphere metagenome

Sulfur cycling microbial communities in rhizosphere sediments mediate an ecosystem-scale recycling and detoxification system central to salt marsh productivity. Despite the importance of plant-associated sulfur cycling microbes, challenges in assembling these diverse communities have hindered their characterization. A recent emergence of deep shotgun sequencing from multiple research groups has presented the opportunity to coalesce datasets from salt marsh vegetated sediments, enabling investigation of microbial communities across contrasting latitudes and dominant vegetation. Here, we reconstructed metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from sediments under S. alterniflorus, S. pumilus, and J. roemerianus, sampled in northern (Massachusetts) or southern (Alabama) U.S. salt marshes.