Mapping the microbiome on the Tibetan Plateau for bioprospecting

Although high-elevation ecosystems play a crucial role in microbial diversity and evolution, they remain a blind spot in Earth’s microbiome research. This study conducted a large-scale metagenomic survey targeting six typical ecosystems on the Tibetan Plateau-the world’s highest and largest alpine region—collecting 1,729 environmental samples from 879 sites. Based on 55.3 Tb of sequencing data, we reconstructed 51,922 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs), from which 17,920 species-level taxonomic lineages were identified.